Last week, I was with my husband on a short weekend break in Zagreb in Croatia. During our stay in the Croatian capital, we dined in a range of traditional and oriental restaurants.

During the second day of our sightseeing, we booked a table at the popular local restaurant – Lanterna na Dolku.

Location:

Lanterna na Dolku is located in the city’s centre, on one of the oldest streets at the Dolac Market.

Owners pride themselves of sourcing most ingredients from the local market traders called ‘kumice’ to make sure that their all dishes prepared at the restaurant are fresh and use locally sourced ingredients.

Atmosphere:

Lanterna na Dolku has a lot of heritage to it and up to 40 people can be seated inside in an over 300 years old basement. In addition, up to 25 guests can sit on a terrace which overlooks the cathedral. When we arrived, the weather was lovely so we decided to sit outside, enjoy the weather and admire the surroundings.

We were welcomed by one of its founders-Tom. He was extremely professional and made us feel like we known him for ages. His customer service skills were excellent and the smile was constantly present on his face. He made us feel relaxed and joyful even before we started our meal.

The atmosphere of the restaurant is cosy and it has a homely décor. There were nice small flower arrangements on all the tables.

The menu:

The goal of restaurant’s founders was to combine the modern and the traditional in both the interior design and on the plate. The menu at Lanterna na Dolku offers a great selection of authentic Croatian dishes that were inspired by an old cookbook from 1854 that owners found in the Zagreb City Museum.

Starters:

Before we ordered our starters we decided to have a glass of white wine from a traditional Croatian winery.

While sipping our refreshing wine, we decided to share some cheese strudel wrapped in prosciutto which was really tasty.

Mains:

There was a nice choice of mains on Lanterna na Dolku’s menu. For these of you that read my blog regularly, you will probably know that I often choose fish as I love all seafood. I decided to have a sea bass fillet in truffle sauce with fresh truffles accompanied by some homemade croquettes. What can I say? Wow! Wow! Wow! It was simply amazing! I could have that meal every day. The flavours all worked perfectly with each other and it was simply delicious.

My husband decided to have Pil-grill- a chicken fillet with tomatoes, cheese and peas. It was flavoursome and he finished it all in no time.

Desserts:

We asked Tom to recommend 2 desserts to us and he told us that we need to try: Lanterna štrukli and Lanterna mousse which are both restaurant’s signature sweet courses. We listened to his endorsement and decided to share both of these desserts.

Lanterna štrukli in blueberry sauce recently won a prize at the Austrian baking competition and it was mouth-watering.

Lanterna mousse on the other hand was a perfect blend of mousse with cookies and chocolate. They were both delicious.

Overall experience:

We both had a great time in this family run restaurant. Lanterna na Dolku serves delicious traditional food with a modern twist using only the highest quality, locally sourced, fresh ingredients. I absolutely loved my sea bass so if you like sea food then you should look no further and give it a go. The service was excellent, location is superb and the restaurant serves real ‘homely’ dishes so I would recommend it to anyone visiting Zagreb in a heartbeat. Lanterna na Dolku is where you come to if you want to feel at home to have a beautifully presented and flavoursome traditional meal.

Website:

For more information and to book visit:

http://www.lanterna-zagreb.com/en/

Address:

Opatovina 31,

10000 Zagreb, Croatia

I hope you enjoyed reading this review!

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Pauline