A Slovenian culinary project, which equals affordable fancy food.
Teden restavracij (Restaurant week) is a Slovenian culinary campaign, which promotes excellent Slovene cuisine, as in fancy gourmet restaurants. The participating restaurants allover Slovenia offer a special menu for the duration of the week, consisting of at least 3 courses for a fixed price, which is considerably lower than usual. That means it’s a great chance for us plebs to enjoy some much fancier food than we could usually afford and discover new restaurants, but beware, they get you hooked on coming back at full price.
All restaurants that participate are invited to do so by the food critic Uroš Mencingar after he visits and reviews them. He seems to know what he’s about, because Restaurant week is getting increasingly successful. The restaurants are supposed to be the best in Slovenia and range from fancy slow dining to more hearty, comfort food or exotic options, so there’s something for everyone.
Restaurant week runs twice per year for 10 days, even though it is called a week, and has been running for a few years now. In autumn 2019 there were 100 participating restaurants and the price for one meal was 19 eur (it is now between 23-28€ in 2023), excluding drinks, but they offer an accompanying wine selection or additional courses if you want to go the extra mile. The menus are posted online in advance so you can pick and choose where to go and reservations are mandatory. You need to book a spot as soon as possible, because they usually fill up quite fast. Since Restaurant week happens twice per year, I really recommend it if you’re ever in Slovenia at the right time. 🙂 In fact, you should probably plan your visit around this if you’re a foodie, as this is the right time to visit and enjoy some fancy food.
Autumn 2019 – Kult 316
Click to read the full review
I’d known about Restaurant week for quite a while now, but never got around to making a reservation until October 2019. My boyfriend and I tried out the Kult 316 restaurant, which is a fancy place run by the Higher school for hospitality and tourism in Ljubljana, where the students get to show off their work. We were more than satisfied, with both the service and the food. So much so, that we’re planning to come back and blow our budget during non-restaurant weeks as well. It turns out that their regular menus are not actually eating-bread-and-water-for-a-month expensive, so this was a winning choice altogether, as we now know a new fancy and affordable place.
THE MENU:
- Choux dough pastry with curly sprouts pesto and purple carrots with plums, mustard, trout caviar and crunchy breadcrumbs
- Cold almond soup with Indian cress oil and apples
- Venison tartare with elderberry gel, pine tree mayonnaise, hazelnuts, penny bun mushroom foam and lettuce
- Guinea fowl fillet and chicken mavželj, celery root with brown butter, quince, Brussels sprouts and meat sauce
- Chestnut cream with white chocolate, chocolate crumble, meringue with mandarins, plum and black tea sorbet




Spring 2020 – Altroke
Click to read the full review
The spring edition of Restaurant week usually happens in April, but this year it got postponed to June due to the coronavirus crisis. This time we went to Altroke, a restaurant in Ljubljana Oldtown with Istrian-inspired food. The menu looked delicious and I actually had quite high expectations – although the food was good, I was a bit disappointed, because it just wasn’t WOW! good like last year.
The dessert was just a bit too sweet, with nothing sour to balance that, and the appetiser beef tagliata and risotto were a bit bland. The service was somewhat rushed and they kept forgetting to pour us more wine (they were pouring by the glass), same with tiny jugs of water. This may sound like nitpicking, but that’s what you expect when you go to a fancy restaurant, particularly during restaurant week when all the places are flexing their culinary muscles. Nonetheless the food was good and even great for the promotional price of 19eur, and the fennel soup was amazing! I don’t think I’ll be coming back to pay the full price though, because Altroke is quite expensive and definitely overpriced from what we’ve seen here.
THE MENU:
- Broad bean pate with homemade olive grissin
- Beef tagliata autochthon Istrian cow Boškarin, dandelion, truffle mayonnaise, toasted bread, capers
- Creamy soup with fennel and chips chopped olives, fresh dill, herbal oil
- Asparagus and saffron risotto, Parmesan chips
- Duck legs, dumplings with dandelion and sweet mashed potatoes, refosco sauce
- Homemade albumin curd, almond biscuit/streusel, frizzantin sparkling wine cream, raspberries, refosco reduction






Autumn 2020 – Shambala
Click to read the full review
Even though Slovenia is right in the midst of the second wave of corona, we still managed to attend the autumn edition of Restaurant week. So, this time we went to Shambala, an Asian fusion restaurant in the centre of Ljubljana, which got the Michelin plate award this year. Honestly, I was quite impressed! The flavour combinations were innovative and absolutely delicious, the ambient and the service was nice, and they even had me voluntarily eating pineapple in 2 dishes. For the record, I can’t stand pineapple, but they somehow marinated it into something quite tasty, so I didn’t mind it at all. I loved that all the dishes came with flowers for decoration (because we are a bit weird we even ate the one that came with the salad), although the meat was a bit overcooked. All in all it was absolutely worth the money we spent though.
We also ordered 2 extra courses that weren’t included with the regular Teden restavracij menu, but were meant as a complimentary special offer, as well as dessert. I’m really glad we did, because the beef noodles with kimchi might just be my new favourite thing, which I’ll try to recreate at home as soon as possible.
THE MENU:
- Greetings from the kitchen: “Faux gras” made of shiitake and chestnut
- Salad with smoked trout, pear and orange ponzu
- Black tiger prawns in miso marinade with pineapple
- Slightly spicy carrot soup with Asian spices and tofu marinated in pumpkin oil
- Beef noodles with kimchi
- Pork ribs marinated in butter and sesame oil, prepared sous vide, with smoked blackberry sauce and mashed hokkaido pumpkin, melon, pineapple and sweet potato
- Chocolate souffle with mango ice cream and coconut cream
- Matcha tiramisu








Spring 2021 – Kevder
Click to read the full review
The spring Restaurant week edition was once again postponed to June due to the pesky C and this time we went to Kevder, a lovely restaurant within the small family-owned hotel Pok at Brezovica, about 20 minutes out of Ljubljana. Maybe it was the post lockdown hype and the herbal gin tonic, or maybe it was just that great, but I loved it! The ambient was very nice and the food was local, seasonal and delicious (they promote it as “green cuisine”). The staff were friendly and you could tell they were a tight-knit family.
If I had to complain, I’d say the portions for Restaurant week were too small, but we ordered an extra cheese plate with a selection of local cow, sheep and goat’s milk cheeses with apricot and raspberry jams and the homemade ice cream (I had apple pie and my boyfriend had mango and raspberry) and I was a happy foodie. The portions we saw coming to other tables were normal, so we’re planning to come back, because the smoked bull meat we got was a total masterpiece and so was the intro pea ice cream (who would’ve thought). The waitress, who turned out to be the girlfriend of the owner’s son, told us they’d made the ice cream early that morning and I could tell, because it was amazing. We also had a slight mishap when the power went out for quite a while, but they quickly set up a romantic atmosphere with candles and were super flexible and chill about the whole situation.
THE MENU:
- Greetings from the kitchen: pea ice cream with flaxseed crust
- Barje sashimi: tarragon marinated proso millet with smoked red trout and tarragon emulsion
- Pink potato gnocchi with spinach – nettle cream sauce, topped with fresh cheese from the neighbouring farm and ground pumpkin seeds
- Bull steak, roasted and smoked for 24 hours, with thyme and lavender hydrosol and mixed vegetables






Autumn 2022 – Landerik
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For the 2022 culinary experience we chose Landerik, a restaurant close to our new home which had recently received a Michelin plate rating. I therefore had very high expectations and can honestly say that I was not disappointed. In fact, I was positively surprised by how top notch the whole experience was compared to other restaurants during Restaurant week and I’d give them a 5+ star rating if I could.
The food, the service and the atmosphere were perfect and it was unexpectedly also the first time during Restaurant week that we had stuffed ourselves full as the portions were not small. The mushroom soup was superb and in the words of my partner: ‘the most mushroom soup ever’, the veal cheeks were deliciously tender and the dessert was not too sweet, which is my common complaint. Additionally, I loved that they promote local cuisine in a fancy way, so every dish had its own backstory of local suppliers and all the wines were Slovenian as well. We will definitely eat there again!
THE MENU:
- Greetings from the kitchen: brioche bites with Krškopolje pig lardo
- Chicken thigh with chicken liver, goose liver pate, herb dust, lemon mayonnaise and fresh and pickled white radish
- Mushroom cream soup, roasted porcini mushroom, chestnut and black trumpet mushroom dust
- Baked potatoes with potato foam, white truffle and pickled salicornia
- Slow cooked veal cheeks with a local variety of polenta, savoury sauce with herb oil, horseradish mayonnaise and marinated carrot salad
- Grandpa’s half whole wheat šmorn (pancake torn in pieces) with plum jelly, dried plums marinated in red wine, white chocolate ganache and buckwheat crumble






SPRING 2023 – GEORGIE BISTRO
Click to read the full review
In spring 2023 we chose the Georgie bistro because my friends heartily recommended it and we were both glad for it, because it was amazing. However, due to a confusing booking system, we managed to book our table a few days before Restaurant week officially started, so we ended up eating the regular (more expensive) 5 course tasting menu instead of the promotional one. I still decided to include the review here, because we didn’t go anywhere else for this restaurant week and because the experience was simply too good to ignore.
The food was very original and still seasonal and rather local in taste, with no exotic avocados or mangoes. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I love chefs that can make novel, fancy food without relying on the wow factor of exotic ingredients too much. They did use koji mold to age their pork and it was really tender and delicious + they got my partner to eat Brussels sprouts, which he really dislikes, so you better believe the food was exceptional and we gladly told them so.
THE MENU:
- Greetings from the kitchen: brioche with miso butter, toasties with black garlic mayo and profiteroles with tofu cream
- Cauliflower with spinach salsa, Bernaise sauce, confit egg yolk and hazelnuts
- Trout tartare with rice chips, preserved lemons and horseradish and trout caviar
- Turnip “cacio e pepe” with cheese foam
- Aged pork with white bean veloute, kale kimchi, Brussels sprouts with pork cracklings and honey and blood pudding crumble
- Date cake with shoyu salted caramel, peanut sauce and cottage cheese ice cream






I’ll keep updating this post with quick restaurant reviews from Teden restavracij every time we attend one, so make sure to check back occasionally. 🙂
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