Have the Best Seafood of your Life in Zadar, Croatia

In the spring of 2018, my newlywed partner and I were journeying along the coastline of Istria all the way south to Dubrovnik, Croatia in search of the best seafood that our money could buy.

Our first meal in Croatia was in the northern Istria region in the town of Novigrad. We had some beautiful, fat scallops followed by tagliatelle with mixed fish and truffle oil. Fun fact: scallops and truffle oil are both local to the Novigrad area. I’m not a truffle fan and I can say that’s the best truffle pasta I’ve ever tasted. After that meal we had dedicated ourselves to seafood-exclusive dinners.

The next day was our longest driving day. Five hours total, up and down switchback mountain roads and then major freeway with tunnels galore. The outskirts of urban Zadar were a relief. In fact, the city reminded Billy and I both of Kelowna, British Columbia. Big, box stores upon entry heading straight towards water as we made our way to the city centre.

Old town Zadar is along the coastline and feels quite separate from the modern Zadar. Once we found parking in Old Town, we met up with our AirBnB host and got settled in.

Our host was concerned about where we had parked as there was going to be a cycling race the next day. There were notices everywhere (in a language we couldn’t read well, even with Google translate) about the race and the towing of cars. We did some research and figured that we would be fine to leave our car there overnight and safe to leave at 9 AM Sunday morning before the race started at 3 PM. The host agreed and he gave us a restaurant recommendation for the evening – Restoran Bruschetta.

Restoran Bruschetta is absolutely fantastic. First off, the service was friendly, relaxed and very professional. We were a little bit rattled and fatigued from our 5 hour drive through the mountainous region of rural Croatia and our server took really good care of us soon as we sat at our patio table. We started off with an aperitivo – a drink and a light snack before dinner. After that, we put ourselves in his hands to guide our meal selection.

We had:

• Pasta with zucchini and pesto – a Croatian specialty “little fingers”
• Octopus carpaccio
• John Dory fish (YUM!) with potatoes and deep-fried leeks
• Grilled calamari with Dalmation-style swiss chard

This meal blew the doors off our house. Afterwards, we were so full, we went for a romantic walk along the shore. And then we stumbled on a very nifty interactive light installation.

Zadar was so relaxed and charming that we woke up the next day and decided to slow down our trip and cancel a few spots so we could really enjoy the rest of Croatia.

We packed up our stuff eager to see Split. As we rounded the corner, low and behold, our rental car was being hoisted up onto a tow truck. I left my suitcase with Billy and went running, my arms waving in the air, to plead to the tow truck guys. There was no need to worry. The drivers immediately started to unhook our car. We expressed our gratitude and hightailed it out of there. We would have stayed longer in Zadar but we both saw that as a sign our relaxed moment in time there was up.