Aleš Grašič

Aleš is in love with his job: this is the first thing you notice when visiting the chef at the Grand Bernardin 5*. He enjoys making menus, dishes and combining tastes from local ingredients. Grand Hotel Bernardin is the right choice if you want a real risotto, which satisfies also the most critical Italian guests, or an excellent fish carpaccio, a fish fillet or a breathtaking dessert.

Focus on natural ingredients and taste creation inspired by Italian and Mediterranean cuisine is the vision of cooking in Grand Hotel Bernardin. The rule is... less is more... our chef likes local dishes with a modern touch.  

It happened in a spontaneous, natural, unplanned way...during school it became love. Aleš cooked for the first time in elementary school, as every child he started with puddings. At the end of catering school in Maribor pudding became mashed potatoes and spinach. After school at the age of 18 he started his practice at Grand Hotel Bernardin. That was followed by selfstudies, cooking work-shops in Chioggia in Italy, exchange with the chef Bine Volčič, cooking programmes. Becoming a chef involves a lot of practice and maturity, experience and desire of creation and perfectionism. Aleš is inspired by love for minimalism and textures in combination with molecular cuisine. He is attracted by tidy spaces, accuracy and organisation. Discipline and order are the roots of quality. A perfect cuisine needs a vision and Excellency on the plate and constant perfectionism. Trying tastes and techniques while repeating the same dish over and over again and looking for solutions lead to complete synergy of taste and image.