Friends Once ‘Escaped’ Her Cooking. Now, She’s One of the World’s Best Chefs.

In her first days on the job, Ms. Ros dreamed of remodeling Hisa Franko right into a journey vacation spot. She wished individuals from surrounding cities to go to for a style of native elements and intense flavors.

She had no abilities at the moment to execute her imaginative and prescient however had pure instincts. “The way a painter sees colors, I see flavors,” she stated. Ms. Ros is now identified for making use of world-class methods to native elements — trout from the Soca River, cheese aged within the cellar, porcini from the forest close by. She doesn’t do signature dishes; all the things is seasonal.

Last 12 months, she opened Pekarna Ana, a bakery in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, and in February, she opened a pop-up bistro in that metropolis referred to as Ana in Slon. The first everlasting location of the bistro will open in Ljubljana this fall.

The prime minister of Slovenia, Robert Golob, who has identified Ms. Ros since 2012, considers himself a fan. “Hisa Franko is an ambassador of our country as a culinary destination,” he wrote in an electronic mail.

But in her profession, Ms. Ros described dealing with added scrutiny due to her gender. People within the trade have typically referred to as her a “marketing story,” she stated, assuming she didn’t have the expertise to justify her success. During visits to her restaurant, the place a multicourse tasting menu prices 255 euros ($280), colleagues had been generally stunned by the standard of the meals. “Why are you surprised?” she stated. “Of course, they think Hisa Franko is where it is, and I am where I am, because I’m a woman.”

Ms. Ros took a circuitous path to the kitchen. Growing up within the Nineteen Eighties in Tolmin, a brief drive from Hisa Franko, she was a aggressive skier on the Yugoslavian nationwide youth staff from about age 10 to 17. She was additionally as soon as a dancer and was a diligent scholar. After an harm, she determined to forgo her athletic profession and examine worldwide relations on the University of Trieste in Italy, with plans to turn into a diplomat. She speaks seven languages, together with Italian, English and French.