Life is not a cooking show

Darja Končarevič is one of those personalities of Ljubljana cuisine, where it seems that the city did not just sit down at her table, but rather changed a little over the years alongside her. Not out loud, not with big manifestos, but with soups, pies, salads, good bread, thoughtful simplicity and the feeling that food is not necessarily a show, but a meeting place.

In a new episode of the podcast Passenger Darja and I drove through Ljubljana – from Tivoli towards her new space on Zeljarska Street, which was once a butcher’s shop, but now is supposed to become something between a creative workshop, a test kitchen, a studio and a refuge from the broken pipes of everyday hospitality.

Today, Darja runs four bars. Two Basilicas, where soups, salads, desserts and pies are at home, and two Buffets, where salads and bowls predominate. In addition, she is the author of two cookbooks: I highly recommend itwhich was released in 2016, and Everyone at the tablepublished in 2022. The first book grew out of the world of Basilica and the dishes that have become her recognizable signature, while the second is more dedicated to home cooking, gathering around the table and the idea that lunch is not a test of perfection, but an opportunity for closeness.

“The second book is mainly dedicated to perhaps relieving the pressure that if we invite someone over for lunch or dinner, things don’t have to be made up and perfect,” says Darja. “The greater focus should be on the fact that they are of good quality and served with feeling.”

And there is much of her world in that sentence: less parade, more feeling. Less gastronomic performance, more table. Less perfection, more life.

Gregor Knafelc and Darja Končarevič PHOTO: Leon Vidic

Bistro as a heart form of hospitality

When Darja talks about a bistro, he doesn’t talk like someone who would read a definition of French culinary tradition from a manual. He speaks as someone who has observed the people, the plates, the team, the suppliers, the moods, the sick leave and the clogged drains every day for nearly two decades.

Behind her, the bistro is above all a smaller, personal, heart-warming place where cooking is done on the fly, from fresh seasonal ingredients, without unnecessary complications.

“Bistro for me is something more heartfelt, where a lot of personal contact takes place. The food must be simple, fresh, at a level. That’s close to me,” he says.

The contact with people was one of the reasons that she started working in the hospitality industry in the first place. The basilica was not created as a coldly calculated investment project, but rather as a family, almost organic story. It started minimally, on Miklošičeva Street, together with two brothers. Then the paths diverged, and the story was layered layer by layer into something bigger.

Today, Darja says that she has increasingly moved from the kitchen to organization, management and staffing.

“Back then I was the cadre, but now it’s more that others are,” she says with a laugh. “Sometimes I miss being involved in the kitchen. But once you fall out, it’s hard to get back in.”

Hospitality is one of those businesses that often smells like freshly baked pie on the outside, but on the inside it’s made up of schedules, orders, costs, people, supplies, breakdowns, cleanup, and a special kind of mental conditioning you need to keep from breaking down every time a pipe bursts on a Friday afternoon.

Darja does not have a recipe for complete peace in this business. “I’m still looking for that recipe, but I’ll probably never really find it,” she says. “It’s best to accept that challenges are part of it. After all these years, I have plumbers, emergency services, janitors on my phone for quick access. And that just makes me happy.”

This is one of the better definitions of mature entrepreneurship: when not only a new idea makes you happy, but also a good plumber.

PHOTO: Leon Vidic

From chef to manager

Darja’s business journey is interesting precisely because it was not built according to a corporate template. She herself says that they grew organically, without large investors, without “upside-down” strategies, without the illusion that good food will solve everything by itself.

“If you want to own your own restaurant, sooner or later you will turn from boss to manager,” he says.

This is a sentence that should hang over the entrance of many a future restaurant. Hospitality is one of the most romantically understood and at the same time the most ruthlessly practical businesses. You can have great taste, but without a system, people, numbers, processes and patience, you won’t get very far.

This is also why Darja emphasizes the importance of support at home. Her partner Luka comes from an entrepreneurial family that deals with the equipment of special vehicles – ambulance, police and fire engines. A world that at first glance is very far from soups and pies, but in truth close in something essential: in both cases, the system must work when something goes wrong.

“You can’t do it in the long run without entrepreneurial knowledge and support,” he says.

Cooking without a nutritional confession

Food has become one of the central cultural themes in the last two decades. Cooking shows, social networks, celebrity chefs, Instagram plates and tiktok recipes have made the kitchen a global stage. Darja mentions this Jamie Oliver as one of the key faces of the popularization of home cooking, but has a cautious attitude towards social networks. She uses Instagram, but she purposely avoids tiktok.

“I’m afraid of that. It’s a rabbit hole, I don’t dare go there,” he says.

At a time when every sauce can become a trend and every dinner content, Darja remains at a slower pace: paper, notes, travels, observing bars, plates, people, soap in the toilet and the number of waiters in the service.

When I ask her which dishes are the all-star classics of her bars, she doesn’t need to think long.

“Pies, soups and salads. It’s three stars, definitely.”

These are the dishes that beautifully describe her philosophy. It’s not food that wants to scream. It’s about food that should be good every day. Pie has to last Monday, soup has to warm Tuesday, salad has to work even when one has exactly 23 minutes for lunch between two meetings and still refuses to eat something that looks like a nutritional compromise.

One of the more interesting parts of the conversation is Darja’s resistance to moralizing food. To that famous line: “Today I have sinned.” As if a piece of cake is a criminal offense and a plate of pasta is evidence of weakness of character.

“It’s so beyond me that one food is considered a sin,” he says. “If we have a healthy basis for eating, if we eat enough different vegetables, proteins, fibers, then from there on there are no more sins.”

This is a reasonable and liberating thought. He does not deny the importance of a healthy diet, but he does not agree to a dietary confession. First the basics, then the pleasure. Attitude first, rules second.

In their home, one of these foundations is the common table. Not every day, because life is not a cooking show, but five or six times a week. “It is very important to me that we eat together every day. Sitting together at the table is essential. Then it’s no longer so important what exactly we eat,” he says.

PHOTO: Leon Vidic

A picnic is not just about meat

When the conversation turns to picnics, Darja is quick to say that for her, grilled meat is only part of the story, but by no means the whole show. For her, the real party starts with the side dishes.

“I think we need to focus on side dishes,” he says. “Grilled meat is not such a party for me. Side dishes are more fun.”

Her picnic world consists of tzatziki, Greek salad, baked potatoes, vegetable combinations, watermelon with feta and onions, three good side dishes and fine wine. There is no need to invent hot water, he says. It is enough that one does not settle for bought sauce as the only concept.

However, cooking according to recipes is not always close to her. Having to follow a recipe like a mathematical formula can make cooking a pain.

“If you have to come home every day, read a book and follow a recipe, you can resent cooking,” he says.

Perhaps that is why there is so much room for feeling with her. For that “little bit of this, little bit of that”, which of course cannot always be romanticized in a professional kitchen, but at home is often the best way to keep cooking a life and not a laboratory exercise.

Basilika is from Ljubljana

Darja never really thought about opening the Basilica in any other world metropolis. He says that she is very Ljubljana. At that, he remembers a thought Urša Jerkičwho wrote in the introduction to her book: “Bazilika is from Ljubljana.”

This is a beautiful sentence because it says more than business analysis. Basilica is not just a local restaurant concept. It is part of Ljubljana’s urban feel. The way a city sometimes pretends to be bigger than it is and more intimate than it dares to admit.

Franchise? Maybe not for the Basilica. She is too attached to her, to her character, to her way of seeing. The buffet is another story. More structured, more systemic, more ready for expansion.

“The buffet is perhaps set up more so that it could be a franchise concept. The system is more strict, the organization is written down, it is more structured,” he says.

But even here she remains cautious. Darja is not the type of entrepreneur who would immediately turn every idea into a table of exponential growth. With her, things often start more organically: she sees something, feels something, likes something, looks left and right for a while, then slowly starts editing.

This is what happened with the new space as well.

PHOTO: Leon Vidic

Creative studio in a former butcher shop

Darja is opening a new space on Zeljarska Street. Not quite for the public, more for myself. The former butcher’s shop will become a place for gatherings, pop-up events, cooking workshops, experimentation and dishes that may not fit into the existing concepts of its bars.

For the first event, she invited Belgrade chef Nikola from Zemun, who in his unpretentious restaurant bakes a breast with a crispy crust and serves it with champagne or champagne. For starters, Ljubljana will thus get a combination that is almost a program statement: a former butcher’s shop, cabbage, bastard and champagne.

“This weekend we will hang out over champagne and beer,” says Darja. It sounds like the title of a film that we haven’t shot in Slovenia yet, but maybe we should.

The new space means a break from operational pressure. From clogged drains, burst pipes and the obligation to make the dish work for many people, every day, in the same concept. I would also like to cook something “stupid”, different, unencumbered.

“I want to be unencumbered by concepts that I have created myself,” she says.

This is an interesting moment in her story. After almost eighteen years on the scene, the entrepreneur, who created recognizable bars, is now creating a space where she doesn’t have to think like an entrepreneur first. Where she can once again think a little as a cook, author, observer, hostess. As someone who allows himself that the idea does not yet have a business model.

Recipes are meant to be shared

At the end of the conversation, he also touches on the issue of recipes as intellectual property. Darja does not attribute too much drama to it.

“Recipes are for sharing and cooking,” she says. “I still can’t cook the same dish exactly twice.”

This is perhaps one of the most beautiful thoughts of the conversation. A prescription is not a prison, but a starting point. Food is not a mathematical proof, but an attitude. Even if it’s the same pot, the same ingredient, the same hand, the same person – it’s never quite the same. And that’s the charm.

Darja Končarevič is interesting in the Slovenian hospitality industry because she did not build an empire of noise. She built something quieter, more durable: bars where people return because they know what they’re going to get, and because there’s still a personal common thread behind it. Even if Darja doesn’t bring every coffee these days, pie, soup and salad are still her decision.

Perhaps this is the essence of her story: that a good bar is never just a place where you eat something. It is a collection of habits, tastes, people, small decisions and daily discipline that the guest cannot see, but feels. This is the difference between a bar that only operates and a bar that becomes part of the city.

And if a place for new dishes, new conversations and new city rituals can be born from the former butcher’s shop, then this is pretty good news for Ljubljana. The city lives not only from big plans, but also from such spaces – small, personal and brave enough to allow themselves to start without a definitive recipe.