A Michelin-starred restaurant in a castle, a cylindrical dining room with folkloric art, and accidental musical pairings. Ljubljana’s Strelec is a universe of combinations.
Whether by design or by curious coincidence, my arrival at Ljubljana Castle’s Archer’s Tower is heralded by the sound of a more recent archer, that is to say Tasmin Archer and her 1992 hit Sleeping Satellite. But it’s not the original that lulls me into my chair. It’s a ‘chill out’ version.
All along the Watchtower
Michelin-starred Strelec is located in this extraordinary former watchtower replete with exposed brickwork, a large chandelier centrepiece, and a kind of stone tapestry depicting historical events.
While this cylindrical chamber of culinary experimentation has its roots in tradition and folklore, the soundtrack is a little more contemporary, but with a twist. Food writers rarely make mention of a restaurant’s music but it is without question a valid part of the experience. Fine dining is unequivocally sensory, so why not include the aural elements. I feel compelled to do so here in these magnificent surroundings as, even though slightly incongruous, it added enormously to my enjoyment.
I take my palate-enlivening Blanc de Blancs from Domaine Slapšak with me to traverse the room and inspect the art. It has spent 48 months on lees but the nose is more herb and white flower than yeast. Thyme seems to pervade the wines here alongside bruised apple and rosewater.
Art meets Food
Popularised in Italy in the late Renaissance, the decorative technique that adorns that walls of Strelec is called Sgraffiti, which means ‘scratching through’ to another surface giving the style texture and colour – elements that pervade the cooking of head chef Igor Jagodic.
His initial welcome takes the form of a Tomato tartlet with pecorino cream. It’s a light yet visibly striking greeting, accompanied pleasingly by an instrumental take on Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven is a Place on Earth. I’m feeling hopeful, and I often wonder if the amuse bouches are statements of intent. ‘I can do full flavours and lightness, sir, fear not’, Jagodic seems to say. He received part of his training at legendary Copenhagen kitchen, Noma, so he was brought up on originality.
A trio of amuse-bouches arrive with one standout creation.
Chicken pâté dyed with beetroot juice on a buckwheat biscuit displays top class design and realisation skills that mercifully drown out the soul version of ACDC’s Back in Black. However, I would happily listen to it again in exchange for more of this exquisite paté.
As Des’ree’s You Gotta Be takes on a swing groove, most unwisely, I feel embedded in a universe of ‘familiarity but not as you know it’.
Start me up
Marinated salmon with pickled daikon is presented as a rose and finished off with cucumber citrus juice which I would happily drink over ice in the castle grounds outside.
A crisp accompanying pastry thimble of Salmon tartare, citrus gel and salmon roe oozes flavour. A wine from the village of Jeruzalem in Steria (in the country’s north east) has a slate-driven, mineral nose with tropical notes and citrus. It’s made from the Furmint grape, but here it’s called Šipon. I am told that this name harks back to Napoleonic times when the French soldiers would taste the wine and say « C’est bon » (It’s good). The locals named it after this endorsement and wrote it down how it sounded to them. C’est bon became Šipon.
Venison in Barolo (wine from the Nebbiolo grape made in northern Italy) and wrapped in shiso leaf with goose liver ice cream topped with crispy shiso canopy and shallot shavings is a tour de force and I can hardly believe this is only a starter.
The wine pairing – Belo 140 (named after the number of gold coins it cost to rebuild this vineyard after phylloxera) is for the shiso rather than the venison and I rather admire that. Slovenian reds are rare in this particular wine region – Bela Krajina – and this dish works as an early in the order ‘night watchman’ brilliantly. It is an archer’s tower after all.
These flavour combinations are such Christmas for the senses that I almost don’t hear the big band version of Aha’s Take On Me. I would have thought Hunting High and Low may have suited venison more admirably but you can’t have everything.
A View to Kill For
From my large window I have, in order of proximity, a wave of trees, a pretty mediaeval-looking city, an industrial Balkan city in blocks, then the hills of Rašica and finally Mount Saint Mary. Levels of landscape serving as a wider setting for Jagodic’s structured levels of flavour and texture.
Now comes a signature dish, unchanged for six out of their twelve years as the Castle’s premier restaurant.
Fried cauliflower with black truffle, truffle mayonnaise, poached egg, puree of roasted cauliflower, with hazelnuts and breadcrumbs for crunch.
The pairing is a Zelen made by the brilliant Primož Lavrenčič, whom I met back in 2021.
Egg and truffle are one of those forever friends combinations but the cauliflower gives it a rusticity. There are few ingredients here but a lot of techniques being thrown together. The beautifully macerated Zelen throws a Mediterranean sunlight on the comforting melée, coming as it does from the south facing and sun-drenched Vipava valley. A catalogue of bursting fruit and minerality. I’m lying on a summer haystack in a roofless barn. Stupidly good stuff. I haven’t noticed a song for quite a while, such has been my immersion in the cuisine.
Pasta filled with celery and chanterelle mushrooms and doused in aged cheese foam comes next, paired with a late harvest Malvasia from the Karst region that was aged in concrete for 2 years and displays a nose of herby butter.
This savoury minx blocks out the reggae version of Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word. And although I understand the philosophy of ‘simple ingredients/multiple techniques’, I found the celery puree too boisterous. Nevertheless, the mushrooms were up to the challenge.
Unusual wines for unusual times
Service is slick and educational. Slovenians want you to know about them. And they love their own wine, much like the Swiss, and have a similar issue with scale of production. They make world class wine but not that much of it.
Case in point is the wine in the next pairing. An unusual melée of Gewurtztraminer, Muscat and the native (along with Croatia) Kraljevina grape, this 2016 ‘Akord’ from Otmar Šturm matures for two-and-a-half years in small oak barrels after nine days on the skins. It’s incredibly rare and there have been no more releases since 2016, and the one before that was 2005. A real treat, then, to be presented with this on a tasting menu.
It’s up against a dish that comes across as a reformatted French onion soup without the broth.
Gnudi in butter and onion soup gel with mustard seeds, spring onion and some dehydrated yeast that connects with the beer in the Jama cheese (named after the cave in which it is matured for 13 months) sauce.
This dish is elevated rusticity personified and probably the pairing of the night. This unusual wine that has echoes of Amontillado is the perfect foil, so much so that the flavours meld into each other and I can no longer distinguish the aftertastes. Astonishing.
Bossanova Madonna heralds turbot, brown butter, lemon, Swiss chard, nettle and Adriatic prawns served with a Slovenian Chardonnay that almost rivals those from the Côte d’Or but at a fraction of the price. The Obelunec 2020 has, as you would expect from a cool-climate cuvée, some green, vegetal notes and these are brought out splendidly by the chard.
The engaging maître d’, Jaka, sometimes serves this dish with a red wine from the Fedora winery (and apparently the winemaker does indeed wear such a hat) made from the Pokalca grape and aged in concrete. I try a little. It’s chilled like a Gamay but the Pokalca has more plush fruit and more smoke, but crucially there is something herbal that has a nice chat with the Swiss chard and the nettle. Both wines work.
Slip of the Tongue (in cheek)
Veal with smoked bone marrow gravy is brought, with aubergine, pine nuts and a sweetbread terrine fashioned from cheeks and tongue, topped with dehydrated black olive, pepper and mustard seeds.
This terrine is a knockout – it’s audacious, exciting and layered. The fresh red pepper is arresting and you need something that cheeky to stand up to the pronounced nature of the bone marrow gravy. A 2020 single vineyard Modra Frankinja (Slovenia’s name for the German Blaufrankisch varietal) has a vegetal, funky nose. A touch of sulphur, swampy water, and something sour which, cleverly, goes with the sweetbreads and the gravy. Only 5,000 bottles are produced each year and here, Blaufrankisch has found its sympathetic forum. The beach jazz version of Here I Go Again, however, has not. David Coverdale will be turning on his Pilates mat.
My Generation
There’s a lot of generational handover in the Slovenian wine industry, and Igor’s 20 year old son hasn’t stopped smiling since starting working in his dad’s team a year ago, so perhaps this will translate to Strelec and the wider restaurant scene.
It has already happened at JB restaurant in the city centre where the celebrated Janez Bratovž recently handed over to his son, Tomasz.
An awareness of the demands of new generations are shaping the menus here. There’s an increasing focus on vegetables as well as a non-alcoholic pairing option for the tasting menus.
« We have a good barman and he’s responsible for all our non-alcoholic drinks, » Jagodic tells L’Observatoire de l’Europe Culture. « We started with some fermented drinks but now we are more on the side of mixing drinks, so this is really a lot of infusions, a lot of mixing of infusions, juices, non-alcoholic gin etcetera. »
« Besides the non-alcoholic pairing, we are working really a lot on vegetarian and vegan dishes, » adds Jagodic, who has the piercing eyes and long jaw of a young Vincent Price. « Five, ten years ago, this was not so important. Of course, you really always had some dishes which you could serve for vegetarians and vegans but now, in this time, this population is, in percentage terms, quite big already. »
Dessert Storm
Rhubarb, yoghurt and elderflower come in a merengue cup and are paired rather classically with a very decent Gewurtztraminer from one of the finest producers of that varietal in this country, Danilo Steyer.
We may be in familiar territory with this pairing, but we’re not with the lounge version of Bryan Adams’ Run to You that provides the accompaniment.
A peach jam cookie has a bit of stodge about it, but the aftertaste is absolutely at one with the revelatory pairing. A nobly rotten Klarnica is a passito wine where the grapes are dried on hay. Viscous but not syrupy, this is something of a revelation and rosemary seems to infuse all. You get this with Slovenian wine. Full of surprises like Frank Bough.
And speaking of surprises, we’re back to bossanova now but the victim in this case is hair metal 80s lipstick collective Poison. Every rose certainly does have its thorn, and although that little thorn was the music, I’m grateful that it genuinely provided amusement while I was taken on a serious gastronomic journey by a father working with his son.
« Until one year ago he didn’t know what he would do in his life, » explains Jagodic. « He went to some other school because he didn’t want to be like his father, spending all the time in the kitchen. But one year ago, he decided that maybe it would be good to see what we are doing. He’s looking, he’s tasting, and now he’s happy, he’s so satisfied. He likes it. »
I roll my way down the very steep hill into town, full of food, wine and admiration as night falls over the pretty castle. A combination of tradition and elevation in Strelec is a fitting culinary flagship for a city made up of the old and the new.
What Jez ate:
Salmon:
Cucumber, Daikon, Salmon Roe, Citrus
Tartare:
Roe Deer, Hazelnuts, Foie Gras, Shiso Leaf
Cauliflower:
Egg Yolk, Brown Butter, Breadcrumbs, Truffles
Pasta:
Aged Cheese, Chanterelles, Celery
Onion:
Albumen Cottage Cheese, Beer, Jama Cheese, Yeast
Sea Fish:
Brown Butter, Lemon, Swiss Chard, Nettle, Adriatic Prawns
Veal:
Aubergine, Pine Nuts, Olives, Smoked Bone Marrow
Rhubarb:
Yoghurt, Elderflower
Peach:
Rosemary, Honey
