Every week, I document another dish that impressed and satiated me during my food adventures around New York City
Someone recently asked me for some recommendations on foods that are black. In New York, I immediately thought of the trendy charcoal ice creams and lattes (which have been banned due to health concerns) or black sesame desserts. I forgot about things like squid ink pasta.
When I was in coastal Croatia last month, i was impossible to forget because squid ink dishes (especially risotto) are one of the region’s specialities.
I had some amazing pitch black risottos in many restaurants and I hope to write about them all in an upcoming travel post. But until then I want to focus on just one and it was very different from all the rest.
Split was my favorite place we visited in Southern Dalmatia. It was the place that felt most like a working city and because of that, it seemed to have the most ambitious restaurants.
Bokeria Kitchen & Wine Bar looks like it could be somewhere in Manhattan’s Soho or in one of the colorful neighborhoods of Barcelona. It’s modeled after a Spanish tapas bar but mostly focuses on ingredients and recipes from Croatia.
The pricing reflected its popularity, but I must say that the light lunch we had one afternoon here was among the best food we tasted on the entire trip.
Instead of risotto, they used sweet creamy polenta as a base for the cuttlefish ink. It was studded with generous bits of the cephalopod and beautifully topped with edible flowers and the most luxurious ricotta cheese.
It was a beautiful dish that was rich, light, sweet, and savory. Perfect balance.
If Bokeria existed in NYC (and I wish it did), there’s no way I’d overlook dramatically colored dishes like this when asked for color specific foods.
| BOKERIA KITCHEN & WINE BAR |
| Domaldova ul. 8 21000 Split, Croatia +385 21 355 577 |
| facebook.com/bokeriasplit/ |
