Croatian restaurants

Eating and drinking

There's a varied and distinctive range of food on offer in Croatia, largely because the country straddles two culinary cultures: the seafood-dominated cuisine of the Mediterranean and the filling schnitzel-and-strudel fare of central Europe. Drinking revolves around a solid cross-section of wines and some characterful, fiery spirits.
Main meals are eaten in a restoran (restaurant, sometimes also called a restauracija) or a konoba (tavern) – the latter is more likely to have folksy decor but essentially serves the same range of food. A gostiona (inn) is a more rough-and-ready version of a restoran. For Croatians the most important meal of the day is lunch (ručak) rather than dinner (večera), although restaurants are accustomed to foreigners who eat lightly at lunchtime and more copiously in the evening, and offer a full range of food throughout the day...

...Because many Croatians eat lunch relatively late in the afternoon, restaurants frequently offer a list of brunch-snacks (called marende on the coast, gableci inland) between 10.30am and noon. These are usually no different from main meat and fish dishes, but come in slightly smaller portions, making an excellent low-cost midday meal. Details are often chalked up on a board outside rather than written on a menu. Most restaurants open at 10.30 or 11am and close at around 11pm; on Sundays, they tend to close earlier, apart from in resort areas.
No Croatian town is without at least one pizzeria, where the price of a filling meal will be significantly cheaper than in a standard meat-and-fish Croatian restaurant. Most of these establishments serve Italian-style, thin-crust pizzas made to reasonably authentic recipes, and seafood pizzas are quite a feature on the coast. Pizzerias tend to serve larger and more imaginative salads than the standard Croatian restaurant, and are often the best places to eat pasta. Again, Croatian pasta dishes are normally authentic, cheap and filling. Look out also for slastičarnice (patisseries), the traditional place for buying eat-in or take-away cakes, pastries and ice cream.

(Source: The Rough Guide to Croatia by Johnatan Bousfield)

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