From August 29 to 31, 2025, Vrbovec will once again become the centre of local tastes, aromas, and traditions with the unique event “What Our Ancestors Ate”, one of Croatia’s most renowned traditional food festivals.
The central message of this year’s festival is clear: No one leaves Vrbovec hungry. Visitors can expect a weekend full of flavours and fun, with culinary delights, cultural heritage, and entertainment for all generations.
For 44 years, the “What Our Ancestors Ate” Traditional Food Festival has been celebrating the legacy of continental Croatian cuisine. This year promises the richest program yet, offering the widest variety of dishes ever presented at the festival.
In numerous locations throughout Vrbovec’s town centre, visitors can enjoy over 100 traditional dishes, all prepared exclusively from locally sourced ingredients by local family farms. Dishes will be crafted by women’s associations, restaurateurs, hunters, fishermen, firefighters, and other enthusiasts dedicated to authentic recipes and customs.
A special focus is placed on forgotten dishes, which may come as a delightful surprise to many, including meals prepared with frogs, snails, and other ingredients inspired by historical family cookbooks of the Zrinski lineage.
The festival thus becomes a culinary journey from the Zrinskis to the present, bringing us back to a time when local ingredients, seasonality, and the art of home cooking formed the foundation of every meal.
The festival’s most sought-after delicacy remains the Vrbovec Pera, the queen of the event and a source of pride in local culinary heritage, proudly carrying the EU designation “Guaranteed Traditional Speciality.”
The festival highlights its family-friendly character, offering a rich program for children, various workshops, sports activities, exhibitions, and concerts by renowned performers that will transform the evenings into musical spectacles:
- • Friday, August 29: S.A.R.S.
- • Saturday, August 30: Prljavo Kazalište
- • Sunday, August 31: Dalmatino
To satisfy all musical tastes, visitors will enjoy performances across five stages featuring diverse music genres.
Throughout the weekend, there will be numerous culinary workshops led by renowned Croatian chefs — Melkior Bašić, Tomislav Špiček, and Pavo Klarić — along with a culinary-comedy show presented by Fatman Chef and Aleksandar Lazić for added entertainment.
This year’s festival edition is symbolically dedicated to the willow tree, after which Vrbovec is named, and it represents a deep connection to nature and local identity. The town square will feature Europe’s largest hand-sewn and hand-painted kitchen apron. At the same time, other areas will be adorned with hand-painted umbrellas, creating a charming and unique visual experience.
Join us in Vrbovec to taste, learn, and enjoy what our ancestors ate!
It will be a weekend full of flavour and fun.
Follow “What Our Ancestors Ate” on Facebooku and Instagramu.
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