Visiting
Where to eat
Zagreb cooking is continental and has little to do with Dalmatia. Forget seafood and olive oil: this is Central Europe with Austrian and Hungarian traces — meat, cheese, cream and pastry.
What to try
- Štrukli — the region's signature dish. Dough with fresh cheese, baked or boiled, served savoury or sweet. Zagorje štrukli is the one to start with.
- Ćevapi — grilled minced meat rolls with onion, ajvar and somun flatbread. Balkan classic, available everywhere.
- Burek — layered pastry with meat, cheese or apple. Breakfast, late dinner and hangover remedy in a single object.
- Paški sir — sheep's cheese from the island of Pag, salty and aged. One of the country's finest products.
- Kulen — spicy cured sausage from Slavonia.
- Strudel and kremšnite — the Austrian inheritance in dessert form. For kremšnite, people traditionally drive to Samobor.
- Wine — continental whites from Slavonia and Zagorje: graševina, riesling. The underrated half of Croatian winemaking.
Dolac market
"The belly of Zagreb" — the central market just behind the main square, with its rows of red umbrellas on the upper level. It opens early, winds down by mid-afternoon, and keeps short hours on Sunday.
Upstairs: vegetables, fruit, flowers, whatever is in season. Downstairs, under cover: meat, cheese, dairy, fish. The home-cheese and honey rows are worth a detour — the sellers will let you taste.
It is also where you learn what season it is in this country: wild asparagus in spring, figs and peaches in summer, pumpkins, mushrooms and chestnuts in autumn, and barrels of sauerkraut in winter.
How to choose a place
We deliberately do not publish a restaurant list: places open and close, and an out-of-date list is worse than none. Instead, principles that always hold:
- Walk two or three blocks off the main square. The difference in price and quality is immediate.
- **Look for gablec** — the fixed-price weekday set lunch. It is how locals eat.
- Konoba usually means traditional cooking, pivnica a beer hall with substantial food, slastičarnica a patisserie.
- Look at who is inside. If the conversations are in Croatian, you have probably found the right place.
- Book at weekends. Good places in the centre fill up.
If you want current recommendations, just ask us — we keep the list in our heads and update it more often than any page.
Related
A food walk
Dolac, local produce and tastings — with an explanation of what you are eating and why it is that.