So, Debeluh is that Slovenian restaurant which serves the best pasta in the world. But even though Jure's winning plate featured whole-wheat fusilli pasta (the restaurant now prefers to use the thicker paccheri pasta), young goat cheese, zucchini, pumpkin flowers and pumpkin oil powder of undoubtedly high quality, don't expect to find a long 'mixed' menu offering spaghetti, pizzas, 'čevapčiči' and calamari dishes in this inn located in the main Brežice promenade. Debeluh is not that type of restaurant.

This is a restaurant with empty bottles of Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Gravner, Cheval Blanc, Sassicaia, Dom Perignon, Krug… displayed on the counter. It is a place where warm-coloured rooms are filled with the refined sounds of jazz, where chef Tomič, with his pedigree as a sommelier (and an open propensity for prestige bubbles), serves you champagne upon your arrival, and where the degustation menu is hedonistically based on luxury foods, such as goose liver.

So, even though you can't look forward to giant portions of beef shank or sausages with 'matevž', as one might imagine to get at the Debeluh (meaning ‘Fatty’ in Slovene), the name of the number one restaurant in the Posavje region is not misleading – you will not leave Ošterija Debeluh with an empty stomach after having Jure's eight-course treatment of tartares, beef pâtés, head cheese, beef liver and krškopolje-pig pork meat.

And you will be even less thirsty. The wine card features around 350 labels and is especially well stocked with magnums, archive wines and big foreign names, bordeaux wines, burgundy wines, super tuscany wines… What is more, chef Tomič puts great emphasis on brandies and spirits.

It all started with the grill
It was difficult to imagine that, in just a few years, Debeluh would become a Slovene culinary institution and an indispensable member of the JRE (Jeunes Restaurateurs) association, when, after having finished high school for food processing, the 21-year-old Jure Tomič opened the restaurant in 2002. At that time, the focus of its cuisine was his father's grill and its offer was primarily based on Balkan food (Jure's grandfather comes from Vojvodina in Serbia). But the offer soon changed and the 'pleskavice' and 'prebranec' were gradually replaced by haute cuisine with luxury foods. Nevertheless, the old grill is still being used.
The crusty lepinje flatbreads served with Istrian olive oil are still part of the offer in memory of the Debeluh’s beginnings. Tomič has not lost the taste for a good grill – he still likes to put a selected piece of meat over an open fire and serve a juicy, fat, Florentine steak to chosen guests in the evenings (at the Ošterija Debeluh the day quickly turns into night).