A restyled minimalist interior, with a glass-encased, stainless-steel kitchen and wood-fired pizza oven, provides modernity and increased capacity for Dva Ribara – and there’s a new, wider ranging menu. This establishment is firmly downtown, adjacent to the bar quarter of Stomorica. The menu includes pretty much everything in the traditional Dalmatian cook-book and maintains consistently high standards, although it’s the good-value pizzas that bring in most in the way of local trade.
Kornat heads an increasingly upmarket scene, vying with Foša, Pet Bunara and Hotel Bastion’s Kaštel for top table in town. Some of the key gourmet specialities on offer in the region are Pag cheese, and marvellous home-cured pršut from inland villages like Posedarje. The locals attribute their flavours to the powerful Bura wind, which is ideal for curing ham and instrumental in making Pag grass salty. Look out for cherry-cake dessert using Maraschino liqueur native to Zadar. Made from local Marasca cherries, Maraschino is a key local product and the ideal souvenir to take home.