Croatian Meals and Treats to Try in Dubrovnik

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Delicious traditional Croatian meals and treats we tasted while in Dubrovnik. 

My family recently visited Dubrovnik, Croatia for a much needed vacation. With so many places to visit in Europe, we had trouble deciding where to go but finally landed on Croatia. The area is absolutely stunning with both mountain views and rocky coast. We spent most of our time swimming and the boys (and my husband) enjoyed jumping off the rocky cliffs into the sea. And with every vacation, what I remember most is the FOOD. Let’s be honest vacation centers around the next time that you get to eat. Breakfast, snacks, lunch, more snacks, dinner and don’t forget dessert.

Croatian Meals and Treats

I wanted to share with you some of the Croatian meals and treats we tried. I am no expert on Croatian food, but what I gathered is that the cuisine is a vast array of food with influences from many different places. Croatia has a ton of fresh seafood since they are right along the Adriatic sea. However, Croatia also has a lot of hearty meat dishes cooked over coals or under an iron bell.

Croatian Seafood

My favorite dish was the shrimp risotto. To be honest, I had this two places. The first place was at Restaurant Zoe near our hotel. It was hands down the best risotto I have ever had. The rice was perfectly cooked and the sauce was creamy, cheesy and rich. It had huge fresh peeled shrimp mixed in the risotto that tasted like melted butter. The second shrimp risotto I had was a restaurant in Cavtat. Although it was a very different dish, I have never seen shrimp like this (pictured below). The shrimp were enormous and almost resembled lobster. We kept joking that they were just baby lobsters.

Grilled Meat for 2 & Ajvar Spread

I found an article of the 8 Great Dubrovnik Restaurants and thought we would try out Restaurant Komin. This restaurant serves traditional Croatian dishes and I would recommend it for anyone looking for more traditional cuisine. The first thing you notice is the giant fire pit where you can watch them cook Croatian dishes.

We ordered the grilled meat platter for two, because my husband is a carnivore. It came with grilled chicken, beefsteak, pork chops, sausage and my favorite Ćevapčići. Ćevapčići are like long meatballs typically made with beef and lamb. It was served with an ajvar spread which is traditional Croatian spread made with roasted red peppers and eggplants. It was very flavorful and it was great on the grilled meat, but we also added it to our bread and other veggies. I will definitely be trying out this recipe for Ajvar that I found on the World Wide Vegetarian blog here.

We all Scream for Ice Scream

The first thing you notice in the Old Town is the beautiful stone walkways. Seriously, it looked like polished stone. Most places you are looking up at the sights, but I was constantly looking down in awe of this gorgeous floor.

The second thing I noticed was everyone was walking around with ice cream cones. All of the ice cream shops in the Old Town are busy! Even during off-season, you could barely squeeze in the shop. There were a ton of flavors towering tall in the display. The ice cream was so smooth, creamy and refreshing after walking around all day. My little one enjoyed the chocolate ice cream so much that he had it all over his face. We had several tourists smiling as they walked past and even one asked if they could take his picture. His joy for ice cream definitely made someone’s day.

Candy Shops in Dubrovnik

There were several candy shops in Old Town Dubrovnik. The kids begged to go inside, so we thought we would check it out. We gave each one of them a bag and let them go to town. Later, we would find out that the candy is quite expensive. The store displayed huge wooden barrels filled with candy and you could scoop out as much as you wanted. While I think the candy shop was fun, it wasn’t really worth the price we paid.

Overall the food in Croatia was good and we had an array of choices from all of the restaurants in Dubrovnik. With such a short time in Croatia, I’m sure we missed a lot of tasty Croatian meals and treats, but it was fun to try out the local cuisine.