The team that’s successfully organized the Weekend Media Festival in Rovinj for years, has now decided to organize a food festival in the same town, taking place on May 14th to 17th.
As the Weekend Media Festival is probably one of the most interesting media festivals in Europe, they’ve decided to maintain the brand, so their new food festival is called Weekend Food Festival, and they’ve been promoting it, attracting the attention of the Croatian and international gastro-scene.
One of the ways to do that is to announce some of the names of the people who are coming to Rovinj to present their skills to the guests, and one of the first names they presented was Josean Alija. He is one of the most well-known and established Spanish chefs of the younger generation, who has been active in the restaurant world since 2009 and has been given awards and recognition ever since. He was recognized as the best international chef by Identitá Golose, in 2011 he has received his first Michelin star and the title of Prix du Chef de L’Avenir(The Chef of the future) by the International Academy Of Gastronomy.
Kult plave kamenice writes about him and his restaurant Nerue, located within the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao (which is where chef Alija was born, and his work is greatly influenced by the great Basque culinary tradition), and in 2015 it has found itself on the prestigious list of World´s 50 Best Restaurants, and since 2019 it holds the 32nd place on that list.
Chef Alija is a strong believer in “less is more”, which is obvious in the decoration of his restaurant, but also in every plate that comes out of his kitchen. He wants every guest to understand what is behind every bite they take, how the ingredients were produced and prepared. He prepares the new menus for his restaurant a year in advance, which allows him to fully control the ingredients which come to his restaurant, and ultimately, to the guests. He wants them to understand the effort it took to create his meals.
Weekend Food Festival will take place in the Old Tobacco Factory in Rovinj, bringing together world-class experts in gastronomy, hospitality, mixology as well as the world of wine, oil and coffee.
