Croatian Food

On channelnewsasia this morning, I heard the sad news of a motorway accident in central Croatia where some travellers were travelling from Zagreb to Split. And once again, I am reminded of this beautiful country.

On a more positive note, many people have been asking me about my recent trip to the former Yugoslavia and being Singaporeans, many are interested in the kind of food we ate there. Let me tell you, the food was delicious and we ate like kings. The portions are huge so after the first day, we almost always order only one portion to share. Below are some croatian food we tried. 

Lunch at Hansel & Gretel inspired restaurant: the appetiser was octopus salad with olive oil and balsimic dressing. You can find this on the menu almost at all restaurants around Croatia. 

At the same restaurant, I had freshly grilled trout as the main course. It takes some skills to eat the trout as they are full of bones. But once you are past that stage, the trout tasted heavenly.

 On the way back from Plitvice Lakes, our local guide recommended this particular restaurant which serves excellent grill. After we had this, we realised this dish is actually quite common on croatian menus. It is a mixture of turkey, pork and chicken. We chose to have the potatoes and mushrooms for the sides. Goes well with a glass of local red.

Once we were in Dubrovnik, I couldn't stop asking for squids. Our Plitvice Lakes guide reminded us to try the adriatic squids there. These squids are supposed to be different from usual squids as they are not chewy and melts in your mouth. These 2 squids you see here are actually our appetiser and they are stuffed with mushrooms and I don't know what. But they tasted so good. This comes from a croatian restaurant highly recommended by Lonely Planet and the best part was, it's located just behind our hotel!

If you really want me to describe croatian food, I would say they are very much like italian food, only way way better. I had some of the best pasta here and in fact pasta is quite a local staple. Somehow, I kept craving for them.

The lazy me decided to just stick to the Lonely Planet guide for this trip and hence we landed ourselves at Proto for dinner one evening. This is a slightly higher end restaurant and the prices are higher although the quality of food is only average. The amuse bouche was this little sardine bruschetta.

 And they are one of the restaurants that serve adriatic squids. I just gotta have it!!! The way the squids were done is entirely up to the diner's choice. I asked the waiter for his opinions and he said grill was the best. There you go, I had it.

 On our final night, I declared that I needed to have a last serving of calamari before I can leave croatia with a peace of mind. So we decided to try out this affordable canteen style seafood restaurant in Dubrovnik. There are no cover charges here and no fanciful service either, but the food here is so authentic, fresh and delicious. It is also the only restaurant we had to queue up for in our entire 2 weeks. The food had to be good!

Oh... I have to mention the scampi or prawns as we know it here. The croatian prawns are rather different from what we have here. They have this very hard shell on them, like those on lobster/crayfish and can be quite a challenge to peel them. However, the meat is uber sweet and tasty, especially when they are cooked in this tomato with white wine sauce as seen in the picture below. We couldn't stop slurping the sauce.

Obviously we ate more than what was shown here. But do remember that at times I was so hungry that  I forgot all about taking photos. Also, we suffered from a bout of stomach flu in the middle of the trip and we practically did not eat for about  4 days. But apart from this hiccup, Croatia had fed us well and made us very happy. Did I also tell you that croatian wines are great too? Hmmmm....