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Croatia Restaurant & Travel Guide
- Catherine Walker
- Mar 16
- 4 min read
Exploring new countries while studying abroad has helped me gain more confidence with navigating my food allergies in new countries. However, each new place I visit brings new challenges and adventure. I am still nervous when arriving somewhere new, even if I have plenty of safe food packed and have done tons of research beforehand.
Croatia is a country that I was less familiar with, didn’t know what to expect with their cuisine, but I had always wanted to visit. I booked spring break and an Airbnb to stay at with my friend so that I could have the option to cook if there were not great allergy safe options. I learned that it is nice to have this fallback option.
As with most trips, I packed safe snacks and breakfast options and made my own sandwiches for lunch, just to make everything less stressful for me. People have always said to me that they feel bad that I do that and have to pack all of that safe food, but in reality, it brings me comfort when I am somewhere far away and I wouldn’t do anything differently. Even finding safe restaurants is stressful because you have to be ‘on’ with advocating for yourself and making sure that everything is done correctly. Whereas, I am able to fully relax when I am eating some of my own food, so I like to balance and do a mix of both when I travel. That is just what works best for me. It also helps because usually lunch spots are spontaneous and harder to plan for with allergies, whereas each night we were in Dubrovnik we had a restaurant booked who we had spoken to in advance about my allergies.
I approached restaurant research with a new perspective this time. In the past, I’ve booked reservations in advance, but I couldn’t gauge what the best options would be until actually arriving there. My friend and I walked around the Old Town and asked different restaurants about them serving me with my food allergies– to my surprise it felt like 9 times out of 10, they could make something safe for me. So we settled on three spots that we went to each of the nights of our trip, all of which were so kind and accommodating which made all the difference.
I had my Equal Eats card just in case, but I was pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t really a language barrier, so communicating my allergy needs was very easy in English. It was a more touristy location, which definitely helped with that.
The cuisine of Croatia was somewhat Italian with the options that they served, but I found it similar to Greece with Mediterranean influences as well. They were able to make simple meals safely for me, which was just perfect. Each place I went to did not cook anything in butter because olive oil is local to this region so they said “they wouldn't use anything else,” which was music to my ears honestly. All of the spots I dined at cooked my food in clean pans and were so kind to double check that certain things were safe for me.
These are the restaurants we enjoyed:
I ordered seared salmon with zoodles which were zucchini and carrots.
I ordered seared sea bass (local) with grilled Mediterranean vegetables.
Similarly, I ordered seared sea bass (local) with grilled Mediterranean vegetables, and rosemary potatoes.
For trip planning and things to see in Dubrovnik, here is what we did during our trip.
We stayed in Dubrovnik for 3 nights and we had 2 full days and one evening to explore the city. The Airbnb that we picked was near the Old Town with only a 20 minute walk, and it was a 10 minute walk from Banje Beach which was such a stunning spot to spend an afternoon.
Our first evening, we walked through Old Town and had dinner at Lucijan. The walls of the old city are such a focal point and makes it a unique location to visit. I had never seen anything like it in my life, and the city itself was completely spotless with shiny streets (picture)-- honestly it was so gorgeous.
During our first full day, we spent more time exploring the Old Town and the waterfront plus the cathedral, and poked in and out of some of the cute boutique shops in the town. We had wanted to go up the cable car to have lunch at a restaurant on the cliff, but that was temporarily closed, but make sure to check it out if you go, because it looked amazing. The second half of our day was spent at Banje Beach, just relaxing– I needed a break after a busy couple weeks of school. The sea was so blue and I was surprised that the beach was made of completely white stones– so unique. We finished the day by eating at Dubravka, which had a gorgeous view of the city walls and fortress along with the sunset. It was the perfect day and we felt like we were able to see everything in the city in one day for the most part.
Our second day was filled with us taking a tour day trip to Montenegro where we visited Perast and Kotor on the Bay of Kotor. I also didn’t know much about Montenegro at all, but I was blown away. It was one of the most stunning and underrated places I have ever visited, so the day trip was 100% worth it. We left around 7am and returned before dinner around 6pm. I would totally recommend this if you want to see more of the Balitc countries. Our last dinner after the day trip was at Nautika which was a sister restaurant of Dubravka which meant that they had the same approach to accommodating food allergies. It was located right in the heart of Old Town and it was a perfect location to observe the usual flow of the town.
Overall, I could not recommend Croatia more from a travel perspective and most importantly from an allergy perspective. It is a beautiful country, so underrated, the food was amazing, and the people were so kind and accommodating.
© Cook It Up Catherine
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