This land, in the face of all the challenges brought about in time and space, which were rarely merciful, is both barren and abundant, intense while meek, ruthless yet accommodating, joyful and sorrowful, famished yet satiated.

Herzegovina therefore is a small land of strong emotions, a clear mind, and true beliefs.  It is a land of rugged mountains, of tranquil lakes and vigorous rivers, a land almost smothered by stone. The calm well waters reflect the sky and sun, the stars and the moon, on its travels.  It is a land of precious fields embraced with stone enclosures, with its mountains bearing large plains, cultivated in sweat and toil that are topped with rocky mounds. Everywhere the elements of Herzegovina act as a haven to living and inanimate beings within its own myth: from the fertile lowlands to the rocky limestone highlands, along the dense evergreen underbush and the elevated forests, by the riverbanks and lakes and in its share of the sea.  Herzegovina breathes life into the fruits and plants, the animals and fish which are essential to its cuisine, all of which have a specific taste and aroma. These ingredients have completely developed its gastronomic menu.

This menu – compiled over time – covers a vast inheritance which is both meager yet resistant. It is woven from the direct descendants of the elements of creation! They are pure ingredients and spices, tastes and aromas which are untouched by pollution, contamination or unnatural biological cultivation. That is what is gradually being discovered precisely in Herzegovina. Cooked in those same pots and pans, fires and hearths, kitchens and recipes that seem dreamed-up from ancient fables, in which one can recognize how life was actually generated: these recipes strengthened our bodies and souls. The health of body, mind and spirit owes a great deal to the indigenous, healthy, miraculous Herzegovinian cuisine, to its food-stuffs and repasts which spring up all over this land with its respective regions in the great Mediterranean basin. They say that wherever olive trees grow – that is the Mediterranean. Wherever fig trees grow – that is the Mediterranean. Right up to where sea salt covers mountain flora – that is the Mediterranean, and finally, places where the food knows the debt it owes to the sea and land, water and Earth, warm sunshine and harsh wind – that is the Mediterranean.  If these assumptions are true, then Herzegovina is an exemplary daughter of the Mediterranean.