🇸🇮 Slovenia · Slovenian cuisine · b. 1972
The self-taught Slovenian chef who put the Soča Valley on the world culinary map.
Ana Roš is the chef and co-owner of Hiša Franko, a restaurant-with-rooms in Kobarid, deep in the Soča Valley of western Slovenia. Despite having no formal culinary training, she has built Hiša Franko into one of the most internationally celebrated restaurants in Europe — a destination that draws diners on a four-hour drive from Venice or a one-hour drive from any of the surrounding Alpine ski resorts.
Roš was born in Šempeter pri Gorici and grew up in nearby Nova Gorica. She trained as a competitive alpine skier in her youth, then studied diplomacy in Italy with the intention of joining the foreign service. She abandoned that plan in 2002 when she fell in love with Valter Kramar, the heir to Hiša Franko, and took over the kitchen of the family restaurant when its long-serving chef left abruptly. With no training and only her mother's home-cooking instincts and Italian regional traditions to draw on, she taught herself to cook professionally over the next decade — reading cookbooks, staging in foreign restaurants when she could, and learning from the foragers, cheesemakers and trout farmers of the Soča Valley.
Her cooking is rooted radically in the Soča Valley itself. Hiša Franko's menus showcase wild herbs picked that morning, marble trout from the river, Tolminc cheese aged in the cellar across the road, lamb from the slopes of the Krn massif, and game from the forests above the restaurant. Her style is technically precise but emotionally direct — she calls it 'cooking from the gut' and rejects what she sees as the over-intellectualisation of contemporary fine dining.
In 2017 she was named the World's Best Female Chef by the World's 50 Best Restaurants. In 2020 she received her second Michelin star, and in 2023 Hiša Franko received its third Michelin star — making it the first three-Michelin-star restaurant in Slovenian history. She was prominently featured in Chef's Table Season 6 (2019), which dramatically expanded her international profile.
Cooking is geography. Roš believes that great cooking must be inseparable from a specific place — that you cannot cook food from anywhere if you are anywhere. Her menus at Hiša Franko are designed to be impossible to reproduce outside the Soča Valley because every ingredient comes from a radius she can drive in an hour. She rejects what she calls the 'international fine dining language' of caviar, truffles and Wagyu in favour of the marble trout, Tolminc cheese and wild herbs that define her landscape.
Three Michelin stars (since 2023); a restaurant-with-rooms in a former coaching inn run by Roš with her partner Valter Kramar.
Casual all-day restaurant in the Slovenian capital, opened 2022.
These recipes from our database reflect the slovenian cooking tradition that Ana works in. They are not direct reproductions of Ana's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
“I am not a chef who came from a great kitchen. I am a chef who came from a great place.”
— Ana Roš
“Cooking from somewhere is the only thing that interests me. Cooking from nowhere is what the internet has done to food.”
— Chef's Table interview, 2019
Takes over the kitchen of Hiša Franko in Kobarid after the previous chef leaves; has no formal training.
Hiša Franko begins to attract international press attention through visits from food writers and critics travelling to Slovenia.
Hiša Franko enters the World's 50 Best Restaurants extended list at #69.
Named World's Best Female Chef by World's 50 Best Restaurants.
Featured in Chef's Table Season 6 on Netflix, dramatically expanding her international profile.
Hiša Franko earns its second Michelin star in the inaugural Michelin Guide Slovenia.
Opens Ana Roš Studio in Ljubljana — her first restaurant outside the Soča Valley.
Hiša Franko earns its third Michelin star — the first three-star restaurant in Slovenian history.
No. Roš has no formal culinary training. She studied diplomacy in Italy with the intention of becoming a foreign-service officer, then took over the Hiša Franko kitchen in 2002 when the previous chef left abruptly. She taught herself to cook professionally over the next decade through cookbooks, stages at restaurants when she could travel, and direct apprenticeship to the foragers, fishermen and cheesemakers of the Soča Valley.
Hiša Franko is in Kobarid, a small town in the Soča Valley of western Slovenia, about a four-hour drive from Venice and a forty-minute drive from the Italian border. It is a restaurant-with-rooms — guests can stay overnight in the property, which was a coaching inn in the 19th century.
Hiša Franko cooks radically from the Soča Valley itself — marble trout from the river, Tolminc cheese from the surrounding meadows, lamb from the slopes of the Krn massif, wild herbs and mushrooms foraged that morning. Roš has built a cellar across the road dedicated to ageing cheeses from local farmers — a programme she has described as central to the restaurant's identity.
Yes. Roš was featured in Season 6 of Chef's Table on Netflix, released in 2019. The episode dramatically expanded her international profile and is often credited with making Hiša Franko a global culinary destination.
Hiša Franko holds three Michelin stars — awarded in 2023, when it became the first restaurant in Slovenian history to earn the top distinction. It had previously held two stars since the inaugural Michelin Guide Slovenia in 2020.
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