The Ljubljana Podcast

Have you tried making Slovenian food? Baking potica at home, cooking with kranjska klobasa, or making bread the old fashioned way, with sourdough starter? This episode is about Slovenian food, but more specifically about adventures in cooking it. To learn more I invited two special guests who teach the world to cook Slovenian specialties: Michelle Pusic Ryall and Anita Sumer. Want to know what to eat but also how to cook the best of Slovenia? You are in the right place!

What is it like to represent Slovenia at the Olympics? To find out, in this special episode of The Ljubljana Podcast, we spoke to Lila Lapanja, an alpine skier raised in America who competed for Slovenia at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano-Cortina. What is it like behind the scenes for an Olympian representing Slovenia? Tune in to find out!

Today, we’re talking about one of Ljubljana’s greatest success stories—one that started as a local food event and became a national movement. If you’ve ever wandered through the Central Market on a sunny Friday, following the smell of sizzling meat, truffles, or freshly baked burek, you’ve already found it: Odprta Kuhna, or Open Kitchen.

Slovenes love Balkan fast food, and cevapcici is the classic—the hamburger of the Balkans. Of Turkish origin, cevapi are small sausage-shaped meatballs made of ground meat and are super good and easy to like—if you like burgers, you’ll like these. This episode is all about this, the most popular fast food in Slovenia. You'll hear from Peter Hajdu, Slovenia's grill guru, and Mate Jankovic, Croatia's most famous chef. And…I recommend a “Cevapcici Crawl” to taste the best of Ljubljana. I've outlined an itinerary to do a walk through Ljubljana sampling cevapi along the way. The more friends the merrier. Stops include: Bascarsija, Chevap, Sarajevo 84, Leskovaski Zar, Das Ist Walter, Saraj, Cad, Dubocica, Savska, Portal, Hallo Leskovac...and maybe some surprises. This episode is sponsored by Odprta Kuhna, a great place to grab cevapi on Fridays during the tourist season, and by Hotel Mrak, where I like to stay when cevaping my way around Ljubljana.

Here in Ljubljana, mixology has gone from a niche interest to a full-blown movement. Whether you’re a seasoned spirits connoisseur or just someone who loves a good negroni in the right setting, Ljubljana has a bar stool waiting for you. So, what’s been shaking—literally—in Slovenia’s capital? From the much-anticipated annual Brina Festival to the coolest cocktails bars, and mixologist names to know, this episode has your nightlife covered.

This episode is all about learning Slovenian as a second language. It’s considered difficult to learn by many, but is it really so tricky? To find out I spoke to two anglophone expats to hear of their ex-perience, as well as with two leaders of the Center for Learning Slovene as a Second Language, part of the University of Ljubljana. Whether you’re just language-curious or trying to learn your-self, you may be surprised at what I learned. I’ll also share some of my own adventure stories in speaking the language—one I never studied but speak, well, fluently-ish, as long as it can be con-sidered fluent if I have at least one grammatical error in every sentence. Welcome to the Ljubljana Podcast: Learning Slovenian edition!

Visitors to Ljubljana with an eye for design and architecture cannot help but notice the striking buildings, bridges, and urban design of Ljubljana's genius loci, Modernist mystic architect Jože Plečnik. This episodes provides a self-guided walking tour through the city center that lasts around one hour--a perfect introduction to the "eternal" architect's work in the heart of the city. Your guide and the podcast host, Noah, wrote his doctoral thesis on Plečnik, so you're in good hands!

What do chefs love to eat in Ljubljana? Want to eat like top chefs? We’re going to do to two episodes on recommended restaurants and specific dishes in Ljubljana. One will be recommendations from local eaters, and I’ll save my personal favorites for that one. But this episode has a twist to it: I’ve asked five top chefs, two of them with Michelin starred res-taurants in Ljubljana, for their recommendations. Where do chefs like to eat when they eat out in Ljubljana? And more specifically, what do they order? Because while it’s interesting to learn which establishments are preferred by professional chefs, I think it’s a step more interesting to find out exactly what dishes they crave and what they’d recommend to the rest of us. With that in mind, I spoke to Jorg Zupan and Igor Jagodic, the Michelin-starred chefs, as well as Riki, the chef and owner of my favorite local place to bring tourists—Pr’Jurju in Kamniska Bistrica, about thirty minutes from Ljubljana into the mountains. I brought a pair of expat former chefs—Brit Jason Hartley and American Jake, editor in chief of Guts Magazine, there for an outra-geously good lunch, including schnitzel the size of a snowboard, and asked them for their favorites.

This podcast is not only about Ljubljana, but also about interesting folk who live in Ljubljana. And it doesn’t get any more interesting than Slovenia’s most beloved musician, Vlado Kreslin. Kreslin is a national institution in Slovenia, having achieved the status of folk hero. This episode features an exclusive, deep dive interview with Kreslin, one of Noah's old friends and his favorite musician. Listen to his music to understand the Slovenian soul.

Welcome to Ljubljana and The Ljubljana podcast. In the first episode of Season 1, Noah offers an insider expat's guide to his basic recommendations for tourists visiting Slovenia's capital. Based on an article of his that ran in The Guardian, now expanded and updated, it's a great place to start for an introduction to what insiders recommend you see, do, explore, and eat in Ljubljana.