Dropping Roklan off at day-care the other day I noticed the kids running around the playground with familiar brown seed pods – though I have never seen them in Perth before. The pods come from a carob tree – a rarity here, but numerous in Dalmatia – where they are called rogač. Today carob is [...]
Hearing about our search for the best local trout meal, our crazy Aussie Croatian friends, Jen and Jude from Perth, took us to their favorite weekend noshery, Konoba Izvor in Žrnovnica. Izvor means source or spring, and the Žrnovnica River appears from the limestone just up from the restaurant. Locals can be seen hiking up [...]
A young Australian Croatian living in Zagreb, Ivan Srpek, started a wine import/export company, Bin 19, a couple of years ago. He threw a party in Fabro Restaurant, on Murter Island, the other night to introduce one of his clients, Bartolović Wines, to the local restaurateurs. Bartolović Wines is a new family run winery near [...]
I’m not going to sugar coat it – it would be a difficult task to find rougher towns in Europe than some of the towns of Dalmatinska Zagora, such as Sinj, Trilj and Imotski. But there are still hidden gems out behind the hills to be discovered. Take Restaurant Premijer. Having given up searching for [...]
If looking for a unique souvenir from Split, I would go with what Dalmatians do best – wine and olive oil. For wine, Vinoteka Bouquet is the best place to go shopping. The manager, Denis Bižaca, is not only very knowledgeable about Croatian wine, but can explain it all in English. The shop is 50m [...]
Easter has traditionally been a more important holiday for Croatians than Christmas. They enjoy organizing large family gatherings in their villages, to eat and drink in the sun of the first warm Spring days. We went to visit my grandmother’s family in the small town of Raščane, in the Dalmatian hinterland. Whilst there the discussion [...]
Many vegetarians ask us where in Split can they find a good meal. (Meat forms a large part of a Dalmatian’s diet – whether its fish, lamb, veal or pork – many restaurants will look at you cross-eyed if you request a meal without it!) But there is one place in town that offers excellent [...]
Art&Čok is a gourmet sandwich shop which was recently opened by Peco recently right next to Split’s fish-market. (In Croatian ‘and’ is ‘i’ and ‘Č’ is ‘Ch’ – so the shop is ‘artichoke’.) Peco spent 20 years in the UK and has brought all his knowledge back home, producing sandwiches filled grilled vegetables, roasted pork, [...]
Our friend in Motovun, Claudio, recently took over management of the restaurant that was known as Barbacan but he renamed Mondo. We mentioned it previously as one of the places to dine in Istria. The New York Times journalist, Kabir Chibber, agrees with us in his recent article in the newspaper’s travel section, giving Claudio’s [...]
Geographe Bay, on the south-west corner of Western Australia, is really a giant fresh seafood supermarket for us. We decide what we feel like eating that evening and go out to pick it off the shelves. The other day it was abalone. Sometimes we get some crayfish. The night before last we caught Australian herring, [...]
