When we arrived in Zagreb, the capital city of Croatia, the first thing I noticed was that the air smelled of strawberries. The Dolac Market was filled with different kinds of fresh produce, fish, and colorful flowers, but the most pervasive scent was the overpowering sweetness of freshly picked strawberries ripening in the sun. A euro for a crate of strawberries, a far cry from supermarket prices back in the states.
Next we went to the Plitvice Lakes, further west in the countryside, and stayed at a family-owned guesthouse near the waterfalls. Our first night the owner Ana made us a home-cooked Croatian meal:
Pork cooked in a sticky sweet and savory sauce, risotto with carrots and fresh parsley, cucumber and tomato salad, bread, and freshly-squeezed orange juice
After a long day of travel we literally licked our plates clean, the food was so good. It is a perfect example of how Croatian food fuses the different elements from it's neighboring cultures' culinary traditions: the meat-heavy diets of Hungary and Slovenia, the risotto a variation of a classic Italian dish using the root vegetables available, and the salad style Greek. Croatian food has it's own identity, to be sure, but one that draws upon the disparate dishes of the region.
From the lakes we traveled south to the coastal town of Split, famous for it's Diocletian ruins and Mediterranean port style. We ate dinner (at 10 at night of course) at a restaurant by the dock where the locals all sit drinking beer and wine from the bottle - Croatia has some great cheap wine. It was there that I ate the best calamari I've ever tasted - including Italy, yes - this calamari was tender and fresh, not too heavily breaded, not a bit of "rubber" chewiness that can result in overcooking, just the perfectly prepared, perfectly seasoned calamari that you can ever imagine.
From Split we continued to Dubrovnik, the gorgeous World Heritage Site at the southern-most tip of Croatia. In Dubrovnik we ate (following a recommendation) at the restaurant Nava, which is a tiny little place tucked on a narrow pedestrian side street in the old town, away from the more touristy main strip. They were about to close the restaurant when we arrived later in the night, but the kind older Croatian woman took one look at three hungry young women and said, "okay, I'll make you whatever you want."
So we ordered the seafood platter, which was a feast for kings. Fresh fish cooked whole, crustaceans tucked in between, it was delicious - the Croatian coast, of course, is famous for it's fresh seafood caught in the Adriatic, and rivals any upscale restaurant in the U.S., I'll wager.
Adriatic seafood platter with orata (?), mussels, jumbo shrimp, and squid
Our last Croatian meal was lunch in Zagreb on the return trip north, at a cheap cafe in the city center. The place had two options: the soup with meat or the soup with only vegetables, and for a few euros you got a massive bowl of steaming delectableness, served with bread to sop up every last bit:
Croatian soup with: sausage, lentils, beans (similar to chickpeas), carrots and various other root vegetables - possibly celeriac, cabbage, and spices drawing from Bulgarian flavors, which has a Turkish influence. A generous pat of creamy polenta in the middle, garnished with fresh cherry tomatoes and cheese, radicchio, and toasted pumpkin seeds for crunch.
I will try valiantly to recreate this soup when I return back to the States, but may never be able to achieve its perfection. Croatia is a place, for it's food, scenery, sights and people, that I will have to return to in my life. It is a glorious combination of it's surroundings, and yet entirely it's own.
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