Croatia has always been on my short list of places to visit, so I was super excited to finally make it down here with the girls recently. We only had a week total to visit it and Montenegro, so we were limited to visiting just Dubrovnik this time around. Since we were tight on time, we figured it was better to make a few dinner reservations in advance to make sure we were able to have some great meals while we were there. I had read that 360 Dubrovnik had some of the best views of Old Town and that Bey and Jay-Z had visited this place when they visited , so I made a reservation (done easily enough by email) for us for the 1st night we were there.
The restaurant is conveniently located within the Old City walls and true to it's name, has fantastic elevated views of the Old Town. While Croatia itself is not fancy, the vibe here is high end fine dining. Compared to most of the other places we ate on our vacation, the menu here is pretty classy and closer to fusion than traditional food. We started with the Black Ravioli to share (180 kn = ~$26 USD) and I got the grilled octopus (240 kn = ~$34 USD) for my main. As you can see from the prices, this place was fairly pricey, especially for Eastern Europe standards. You're really paying for the beautiful view although the service was quite good and the food was high quality but it was still a bit overpriced. The Black Ravioli was stuffed with sheep's curd and served with a cream of truffles. The truffle cream was amazing and not too overpowering, it was a lovely way to start our vacation - we felt super luxurious and fancy having truffles on our first night out. As for my octopus, it was a bit on the small side and it was served with lardo, cream of peas, a sweet and sour sauce and garlic croquettes. The octopus was tender and paired nicely with the cream of peas. While I don't usually get octopus in the States, I felt like I had to start my Mediterranean/Adriatic adventures with local seafood. Everyone seemed to enjoy their food, but the overwhelming comment was that the portions were on the small side. Jenn and Amy both got the scallops and there were only 3 medium sized pieces on the entire plate.
Overall, this was a lovely introduction to our vacation and you definitely can't beat the views from this place. This was quite a luxurious way to start our culinary adventure and while I definitely think the prices were too much, I rationalized it with the fact that we were on vacation and that the waiter was super adorable and worth the extra price. Total bill with tip and wine: ~$280 USD for 4 people
Photo Credit: www.360dubrovnik.com
Taverna Otto Ul. Nikole Tesle 8, 20000, Dubrovnik, Croatia 3.5 Forks
On our 1st full day here, it was sadly drizzling. But we were waiting for Krush to fly in from SF that day plus we were all super jet lagged, so we decided to have a very lazy lunch while we killed some time. Since we had just been to the Old City (and it was a bit of a walk from our Airbnb), we looked at some other places nearby. We decided to explore the other part of Dubrovnik that was closer to the Lapad and Gruz area. Taverna Otto is located across from the Old Port which was only a 15 minute walk from our Airbnb through a more local part of town. From the pictures, we had thought there would be outdoor seating, but that was actually not the case. The decor is a bit more like a cave or wine cellar. It also was more casual than it looks in pictures as well - it had more of a cafe vibe in real life. Despite having great reviews and being highly recommended by several guide books, there was no body in the restaurant when we arrived. Given the decor, I assumed the menu would also be more lunch-y and casual but it turned out to be quite the opposite. The menu had a more upscale dinner theme with dishes like pork fillet, chicken breast, risotto and spare ribs on the menu. It doesn't actually look like they have a different lunch and dinner menu.
Despite that, we were totally flexible and luckily none of us were too picky and we were able to make it work. Since we didn't have any food in the apartment and our dinner reservation wasn't until 8pm that night, I decided to just go big and get the pork fillet for lunch. I thought that was a bit of a heavy dish to start and apparently so did the restaurant because the waiter said that they weren't ready to offer that dish just yet. Oh well, so I moved on to the fish fillet (119 kn = ~$17 USD) instead. I assumed it was an entree of fish and a side salad but instead it was actually a side with fish fillets on top of a salad. Despite it not being what I expected, I have to say that the fish was cooked extremely well. It was a fresh local white fish cooked with the skin on which was perfectly crispy with moist and tender meat. It went really well with the arugula base (they call it rocket salad there) which was lightly dressed and came with potatoes, sun dried tomatoes and olives. It turned out to be a surprising dish that I really enjoyed. I could tell from my first 2 meals in Croatia that all of the ingredients here are locally sourced, very fresh, and not once did I feel like I was eating a lot of butter or food with preservatives. It actually felt pretty healthy - gotta love the Mediterranean diet. I tried a bite of Amy's gazpacho and of all the gazpachos we had on the trip (which was a lot) we all agreed that this was the best one of the trip - very flavorful, seasoned well and tasted like fresh ripe tomatoes. This is an adorable place if you are looking for some respite from the crazy madness of Old Town but I would probably recommend it more for a casual dinner scene. Total bill includes tip: $73 USD for 4 people
Photo Credit: TripAdvisor
Taj Mahal Ul. Nikole Gučetića 2, 20000, Dubrovnik, Croatia 4 Forks
A few friends of mine had been in Dubrovnik the week before me, so I hit them up for any last minute recommendations and both of them had said that dinner at Taj Mahal was a must. Of course, when I first saw the name I assumed it was Indian food (which I still thought was weird to go to Croatia to eat Indian food) but turns out that it was actually Bosnian food (makes more sense). I gotta say, I'm a pretty adventurous and diverse eater but I've never had Bosnian food before, so I was excited to see what it was all about. Even our cab driver from the airport was like "oh, someone must have told you about that place. It's very good!"
It's located on a quiet side street in Old Town and I was glad that my friends told me to make a reservation (again, easily done over email) because the place was jammed packed and had an hour+ wait when we got there. This place was what I had envisioned when I was thinking about dinner in Dubrovnik - cute, quaint cobble stone street full of people enjoying good food and wine. We waited a bit past our reservation time because we wanted to sit outside vs. inside - despite it being September and nighttime, the walls of the city somehow made it hot and humid because there wasn't a lot of air circulating around and we were all sweating. The menu is extensive (it's at least 4 pages longs) and not surprisingly very heavily focused on meat (specifically veal) and weirdly enough cream cheese. Our waitress was super sweet and pointed out a few of her favorite dishes and I went with one of her suggestions, the Dulbastije (110 kn = ~$15 USD), and we also got a side of grilled mushrooms with cream cheese (60 kn = $8 USD). I honestly had no idea what to expect but I was very pleasantly surprised. My dish was thinly pounded veal served in a cream sauce and cream cheese which I know sounds totally weird and gross but it wasn't. It's obviously not what we think of in the US when I say cream cheese but it is still a white spreadable cheese version. It was super delicious and in retrospect, a welcome reprieve from all of the similar seafood that we would soon be having. It was a truly unique experience. The one thing I was bummed about was that the menu said that my dish would come with a baked potato but instead it came with roasted ones - they were still good but other people's baked potatoes looked delicious and it got me craving one. We had ordered the grilled mushrooms thinking they would be our "healthy" part of dinner but they were drizzled with the same cream cheese sauce on top of it, so it wasn't really very healthy for you in the end. Overall, everyone else seemed to really enjoy their food. April and Krush got some crazy dish that was rolled veal in a GIANT dough roll filled with mushroom and two types of cheese. It was quite the sight.
While the food was good and unique, what I really appreciated about this place was the genuine and sincere service. We paid the bill without even looking at it. It can be fairly complicated to review a bill with so many of us ordering plus it was in another language, so we just assumed whatever they gave us was correct. We paid and were about to leave when the waitress comes chasing us down and tells us that we paid someone else's bill and that we overpaid (by a lot). Sure enough, after looking at the bill, our total made no sense. They kindly reversed the original bill and charged us the correct amount. They were genuinely mortified and so incredibly apologetic about the mistake. In a busy touristy part of town, they could have totally taken advantage of the situation and not mentioned a thing but they were so kind and nice about it that I just had to give this place 4 Forks - not to mention the fact that it was also my first (and probably only) positive experience with Bosnian food. Total bill with tip and wine: $167 USD for 4 people
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