THE FOOD
The food we tried was generally pretty simple, but incredibly well done and inexpensive. A cheap “fast food” meal of sandwich and fries cost about 20 Kuna which is about $3. A three course meal at a nicer restaurant cost between 80-120 Kuna ($11-18) and was almost always served with bread to start. There were lots of grilled or rotisserie meats with vegetables, risotto, carbonara, perfectly grilled fish and squid, caprese salads, dried meat and cheese platters, fresh bread, pizza, and French fries. They love French fries here :-) as did we! Bakeries were EVERYWERE and had everything from $1 loaves of fresh bread and pastries to giant savory meat and cheese filled filo dough. All manners of cakes and sweet treats, though their version of the donut was much different. Conner loved the chocolate filled donut which was more of a slightly sweet bread puff with a little chocolate cream in the center. The simplicity of food showed in the bakeries as well. Sweet pastries came filled with either chocolate, or marmalade with the occasional strawberry filled variety. Savories were pretty much either cheese or meat. Most bakeries had the same items as the next one down and while everything we tried was delicious, there was definitely less variety than you would see in a bakery back home. Totally not a bad thing for this indecisive person.
Coffee shops were more plentiful than drive-throughs in the US, but the coffee in Croatia is also quite simple. No crazy concoctions, no frills or syrups, and no “drip coffee” (to Gregg’s utter frustration). Just different preparations of espresso with or without milk or cream and sugar. Soda cost more than beer. A Coca-cola cost the same as a beer and was half the size. Ice cream was the dessert of choice in most places and was absolutely fabulous.
We discovered that one of the more traditional Croatian breakfasts consists of different dried meats (mmmm prosciutto) with local hard sheep, cow, and goat cheeses, and a dense bread (or crackers in my version as the gluten free version of this dense bread was…. Yeah it was just yucky). Delicious and incredibly filling. Another traditional dish we tried was called Peka. It is a dish where they put meat and vegetables in a big roasting pan with a “peka”, a dome shaped lid, over the top and slow cook it under the coals in a big stone oven. Once we learned about peka the giant brick ovens outside of every house we passed by made more sense. Thanks to my most awesome Zumba friend Ana, we found a delicious and inexpensive place to try peka. Our only regret was that we hadn’t tried it sooner! A scrumptious plate filled with enough meat and vegetables to fill all three of us (with leftovers to bring home) cost us 90 Kuna, or about $13. The food in Croatia was an absolute delight and one of the best parts of the trip :-).
