My second night in beloved Ljubljana. For dinner tonight I wanted something more then I do usual. I had a basic dinner the night before and had some spending money left so decided to search for one of Ljubljana’s better places.

So I used my friend Tripadvisor on the net and hoped to find something that fits my needs. Just to find out there is no real high-end restaurant available in this town, or at least not according to the web. When I look through the reviews and menus of the top 10, I noticed it are all basic restaurants. The one that looked the best to me was restaurant Cubo, just outside of the city centre.

Right when you find this place (which is not easy so in the industrial business part of town), you see there is much class in this place. The wines hanging from the wall, the lighting etc. This is what I wanted.

Inside just the same classy look and feel, close to a Michelin star restaurant. I got a nice and friendly waiter who walked me to my table. Asked me for what to drink, a suggestion of the house or maybe something else. I have chosen the Tonic without Gin for a change, since I am trying (again, the 37^th time), to drink less and live more healthy…

Brought it nicely on a plate with some ice, together with some snacks, what a warm welcome!

The tree of toast you see above was so good, with some small herbs and sea salt, very nice. The raw vegetables were good as well, only a little bit 1980’s family party kind of thing. The dipping sauce (mayo and mustard I think), was very good.

The nice waiter came back with some suggestions, as well as with the full menu. And I was really in the modd for good food, but what now, so many options, light, heavy, fish, meat, damn why must it be so hard again. So I made a combination decision out of this menu:

I would go with a small Tagliata salad first, followed by the Angler fish as a main. It was tough, because my first choice of main was the Beef Tenderloin, but since I wanted the salad it had to be fish. (2 times meat is not a good balance for a man trying to live healthier….)

So I ordered after some minutes, which took pretty long, to hear that the Angler fish is not available….NNNOOOOO !!! For me being a bit autistic, that was a shock, full planning destroyed… what now? By the way, what an idiot restaurant and waiter of this level to give suggestions without being able to tell what is available and what not… So I had to go with my first choice, the beef (not so bad), of course I then had to change the starter as well….

I went for his suggestion, the spinach soup with the poached egg, not so heavy, smart one Kevin…

After waiting this long to order, I was surprised to see the soup coming within 2 minutes. Why did they want to sell it so bad? Leftover from another guest maybe? For this type of place, they should look more after the total dinner planning of a table.

The soup had a great color! The taste was pure just lacking some salt and pepper, which luckily for me was on the table. With this extra the soup was just perfect, great balance, great soup. The egg was poached just too long, maybe on purpose not to discolor the soup with yellow egg yolk?

The wating time till the next course for me was perfect, just around 15-20 minutes which is as it should be in my book.

The beef came out, I ordered it rare to medium-rare. It was served together with the mashed celery root and fig sauce.

And it was a treat!

High quality of beef, soft as silk only cooked just to long to be more medium then medium-rare. With this quality of meat it does not matter, still was soft, had all of its natural flavors and a good grilled crust on it. The sauce was nice, a bit sweet, not enough wine but still okay. This meat could handle this sauce. The carrot and broccoli were cooked a slow death, and were hanging over the meat… And of course the side dish oh mashed celery root, WOW WOW WOW, don’t know why, but I loved it…!!! So rich and creamy, it went through the passé-vit at least 7 times. It was like day cream my wife uses. So soft, I almost smeared it all over my face…. And the taste was heavenly. So pure, so perfect, yum yum!

Together with this dish I asked for some suggestions by the glass, one of them sounded really good, a local cabernet franc of 2005.

So when the not so nice waiter now, came up with the bottle, I was surprise to hear him tell me about this 2009 blend… First sell me a nice single grape wine, and then come back with a different wine of a different year?! Second time tonight…

Okay, this was a very good wine, but I cannot compare it now. This one went perfect with the meat and is one to remember!

Finished the night with a Cappuccino and had a good dinner, one of the better ones in these countries. There were some mistakes on the food, as well as on the waiter so the score could have been much higher.

Scores:

Food: 8.5

Coziness: 8.9

Staff: 7.5

Price: 8.7

Overall a 8.3 out of 10 which is good!