Sprat, anchovy, pilchard or sardine, small mackerel, mackerel or chub mackerel, bonito, bullet tuna, garfish, tuna and swordfish are the main characters of the beautiful newly released book Recipes and Stories from the Blue Fish Road. The publisher is the Tourist Board of the City of Crikvenica, and the editor is Zoran Šimunić Šime, known to many as Zock from the former Klub Gastronomad at the start of Zagreb’s Jurišićeva Street, where one ate and drank very well.
The Stories from the Blue Fish Road explain how life was lived (and eaten) in Crikvenica in the old days, interwoven with recipes through which the restaurants along that lovely car-free Crikvenica promenade present the aforementioned blue heroines and heroes. Among other dishes, Burin offers garfish confit in oil, Dida a bonito tartare, Domino bruschetta with tuna prosciutto, Karoca sardine meatballs, Half 8 mackerel fillets on jacket potatoes, Trabakul Crikvenica-style rupice, and Ulika swordfish brodetto. The hotel restaurants have their stories too: Lemoon at the Esplanade a mackerel fillet confit with broad beans and chickpeas, Marina a marinated tuna steak with aromatic polenta, and Miramare a smoked tuna carpaccio with aioli, capers, cherry tomatoes and pickled onion.
The book also contains life stories, from long ago and modern times, about fish and fishing, about the Skomerža brothers who at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century changed fishing worldwide and, of course, in the Kvarner too, about the spices of the Crikvenica region, and about the places where one can enjoy fish and the calendar of when to do so. In the section Our grandmothers’ cookbook there are descriptions of a stew of garfish or sardines, Selce puffs and Krk coffee, while a special chapter is devoted to Zlahtina. That ancient grape variety, made famous by the growers of Vrbnik on the island of Krk, originated, the history books say, in Vinodol on the coast. And diligent winemakers craft wines of so many different styles from it that even in this book it is almost impossible to find a dish for which there is no fitting Zlahtina.
19.12.2025.
