The place with the best doughnuts in Slovenia (and doughnut flags).

You know those small towns in every country that are only famous for one specific thing? Well, Trojane in Slovenia is one of them. The only thing that puts Trojane on the map are their doughnuts, which are known as the best doughnuts in Slovenia.

When I say doughnuts I’m talking about the European doughnut variety without a hole, also known as jelly doughnuts or Berliners in Germany. Our doughnuts called krofi are round-shaped fluffy yeast dough cakes, usually filled with apricot jam, deep fried in oil and dusted with powder sugar. In Slovenia they’re particularly popular around Pust (Carnival) time and we generally don’t even acknowledge the existence of American doughnuts with holes. You can check out all the different European ones in the graphic below.

Although I’m personally not the biggest fan of doughnuts and fried desserts in general, I have to admit that the ones from Trojane are surprisingly good, especially their house speciality version filled with blueberry jam, which is a bit sour and contrasts nicely with the sugary, fatty doughnut dough. They are also huge, twice the size of regular doughnuts, so one of them is almost a meal by itself.

The Trojane doughnuts come from the conveniently named Trojane inn, situated on top of a little hill right next to the highway. I was a bit surprised when my friends told me that it’s traditional to stop for doughnuts at Trojane whenever you’re driving by, because my family never did that – apparently we did, but I was too young to remember. I was aware of the reputation of Trojane doughnuts though, because I doubt there’s anyone in Slovenia who isn’t. The Trojane doughnuts are apparently quite famous in the neighbouring countries as well and it’s great to see the inn doing so well.

The Trojane inn

The Trojane inn has been making doughnuts since 1961, so they really know what they’re doing. At this point the doughnuts are in such high demand, that they sell up to 5000 of them per day during the Carnival period and there’s almost always a line at the door, which usually moves relatively fast. Since the Trojane inn is an actual restaurant, you can go there for lunch too, but most people just come for the doughnuts in the doughnut shop next to the restaurant building. The shop also sells cakes and other pastries, but everyone I saw was just buying doughnuts. 🙂

Things to know: A doughnut costs 1.3 or 1.4€ depending on the type of jam. If you buy 6 you get 1 for free (lucky 7! as of February 2020) and there’s a pretty big parking lot next to the inn. To get there you need to take the A1 Ljubljana – Maribor highway towards Maribor and exit at Trojane. There are giant Trojane doughnut signs starting next to the highway exit and leading up to the inn, which even has yellow doughnut flags, so you really can’t miss it.