For years now I'd been wanting to tick Croatia off my holiday list. Well, I say holiday, but my trip to Dubrovnik, on the Adriatic coast, was more like work – I had just two and a half days to check out the local restaurants, food, culture and wine. It was a tight schedule but I took my rod and tackle with me just in case. You never know what's in store.
On my first day I checked into Dubrovnik's newly refurbished Excelsior hotel, which overlooks the sea and the island of Lokrum, and headed for a late lunch in the nearby Proto restaurant. I knew that the food in Croatia is Italianesque, although when I mentioned this to some of the locals they naturally replied that, on the contrary, Italian food is very much influenced by theirs. I didn't want to get into a heated discussion so I left it at that. I chose a plate of local Dalmatian ham, which was perfect and rather like a well-made Parma ham — oops! I followed with stewed octopus and polenta dyed by squid ink — simple and to the point.
After lunch we went for a walk around Dubrovnik, a classic walled seaside town. Once you're inside there is not a car to be seen, just highly polished stone streets — I've never come across any as well-groomed and squeaky clean. The place feels like a film set, although there were a few too many souvenir shops for my taste. I did actually visit a couple of them, as a mate of mine collects fish-related objects. Nothing came home in my suitcase, though.
Dinner was at Nautika restaurant. It's a great setting, with several terraces off the dining rooms on various levels. Our starter was cuttlefish risotto, again with good use of ink. Having it twice in one day was something of a record in my book but both were very good, even if the risotto did turn up with some odd blobs of something on the edge of the plate. I'm sure it wasn't part of the dish and it didn't make it taste any better than it already was. The next course was an unexpected joy, a whole salt-baked sea bass, perfectly cooked and thankfully with no frills. It was served with a commendable olive oil sauce made with an infusion of rosemary and thickened with egg yolks, rather like a hollandaise or mayonnaise. It was a perfect supper washed down with the local Possip white wine.
Oysters were something that I didn't quite expect to be on the menu during this break but the next day we took a trip to Ston, about an hour away to the north on the Peljesac Peninsula, to spend the morning with an oyster fisherman on his boat. The oysters are not grown in beds as we see in the UK but on ropes like mussels, and they are the flat oyster variety, Ostrea edulis. The oysterman told us that they often get eaten by dorado that come into the estuary for a lazy supper. I was casting a lure in amongst the oyster ropes while he was telling me, so this got me slightly excited as you can imagine, but there was no joy.
