PIKAPOLONCA: Japan’s only Slovenian restaurant in Kyoto

PIKAPOLONCA Slovenian restaurant in Kyoto

A Kyoto house disguised as a Slovenian eatery. It’s a real-life Studio Ghibli movie. – Sushi Sandwich

PIKAPOLONCA is the only Slovenian restaurant in Japan (as of 2023). The restaurant was opened in 2001 by Slovenia’s capital Ljubljana-born Igor Leiler.

The storefront of PIKAPOLONCA.

The interior of PIKAPOLONCA.

Inside the iconic red and white exterior of PIKAPOLONCA is a cozy Japanese cafe-style eatery. “An ordinary modern Japanese house disguised as a cafe” is how I felt. This place could be just another house of my local Japanese friends (with specifically Slovenian decors on the walls).

Food items on PIKAPOLONCA’s menu seem to try their best to explain what Slovenian cuisine is to Japanese people who may or may not have heard of Slovenia. PIKAPOLONCA offeres “a lunch plate” that covers basic/iconic Slovenian food.

The menu explains Slovenia and Slovenian cuisines in perfect, plain Japanese.

The lunch plate contains herbal tea, bread, Slovenian soup (obara), Mediterranean seafood risotto, buckwheat pie with ham and cheese (ズリヴァンカ in their term), sausage with sauerkraut, and pickle salad.

Mediterranean seafood risotto, sausage with sauerkraut, buckwheat pie with ham and cheese.

Bread, soup (obara), pickle salad.

The food at PIKAPOLONCA in one word is “homespun.” It comes with love. After eating humble-yet hearty Slovenian meals and walking back and forth between local posters, local cycling team (Ljubljana Gusto Santic) gear, and hand-selected books about Slovenia, I felt full of immersion in this Slovenian museum (sort of). But their somehow nondidactic vibe was quite Kyoto eatery. It was beguilingly otherworldly, after all.