Istria, Croatia: Best Places to Eat and Drink in Europe's Hidden Foodie Gem

In northern Croatia lies a culinary hidden gem: Istria. Known for its excellent production of olive oils, wines, pastas, and of course, truffles, this region is a foodie’s dream destination. All food in the area is incredible, but if you’re visiting northern Croatia, you won’t want to miss this dining guide with these best places to eat and drink in Istria!

Honestly, you can stop into any little family-run restaurant/tavern or “konoba” in Istria, Croatia and find one of the best meals you’ve ever tasted — almost always entirely sourced from local or family farms, vineyards, and olive groves. But I toured the area for a week, dedicating every minute to scoping out the very best places to eat and drink in Istria to share with you (I know, so selfless of me).

This foodie guide is designed to give you a sort of DIY Food Tour around northern Croatia. It’ll allow you to visit tons of different towns in the Istria region, sight-see a bit, and meet the local families that are the heart-beat of the culinary scene here, while also enjoying some absolutely incredible meals and drinks.

Read below to see what restaurants (and which particular dishes) made the cut!

Best Pasta: Konoba Stari Podrum

Eat This: Truffle Fuzi

Location: Momjan

Website: www.staripodrum.info

This beautiful, family-run restaurant has a semi-outdoor terrace and gardens, perfect for a nice sunny afternoon lunch or early evening aperitifs. The wine list is impressive and, like anywhere in Istria, expect your waiters to have a healthy knowledge of the different grapes and bottles. Meat is excellent, as are the appetizers (like the vegetable carpaccio), but what really stole the show was the homemade truffle fuzi.

Call ahead to get a spot on the semi-enclosed patio!

This is the pasta most famous to the Istria region, and there’s no better place to try a perfect homemade fuzi than at Konoba Start Podrum. Perfectly al dente noodles, cream sauce made with the highest quality truffles, and served with a generous portion of shaved black truffles on top. It’s simple (and the same dish you can find menu at many places in Istria), but it’s by far the best truffle fuzi I had anywhere in Istria.

Stari Podrum’s perfect black truffle fuzi with a truffle cream sauce

Best Truffles: Karlić Tartufi

Eat This: Truffle Tasting Plate

Location: Paladini

Website: www.karlictartufi.hr

If possible, make a day of your visit to Karlić Tartufi by setting up a truffle tasting, and even a truffle hunting excursion in the nearby mountains. This region is one of the few in the world that produces white truffles, and you can head out with the Kalic family dogs to go find some buried in the earth.

Karlic’s beautiful dining area with panoramic views of their own truffle-hunting mountains

Learn about the truffle hunting and producing industry before tasting some yourself!

After your truffle hunting adventure, soak in the views and enjoy a tasting plate in the beautiful restaurant. You’ll get to try homemade truffle tapenade, cheese, mousse, salami, scrambled eggs, balsamic, and even Nutella (yes, truffle Nutella — you can buy some in the shop as well and take it home with you… highly recommended!), all served alongside wines from the family vineyards. This was one of my favorite things to do in Istria and I can’t recommend it enough!

Truffle scrambled eggs — an Istrian specialty — prepared fresh by the Karlic family

Truffle tasting plate with truffle mousse, cheeses, salami, honey, balsamic, tapenade, and more!

Best Dessert: Konoba Morgan (truffle chocolate lava cake)

Eat This: Truffle Chocolate Lava Cake

Location: Brtonigla

Website: www.konobamorgan.eu

This place also wins the award for the best views, as its spacious outdoor patio sits atop a hill covered in vineyards, which offers the most perfect sunset views to accompany your dinner.

Everything here was delicious, including the truffle ravioli and the melt-in-your-mouth boskarin (Istrian ox), as well as the complementary “bread basket” which came with fresh bread, crackers, pate, various spreads and sauces, and olives — raising the bar on all future bread baskets.

I don’t have a category for best sunset views, but if I did, this place would probably win that one, too!

But the dish here that I still have dreams about, that I still talk about with anyone who will listen, was the truffle chocolate lava cake. Anyone who knows me or follows me on social media will know about my deep soul connection to lava cakes. I’ve had hundreds in my lifetime, and I think fondly of all of them.

But the lava cake served at Konoba Morgan still is my absolute favorite — a rich, bittersweet chocolate cake with the perfect hot liquid core, swimming in a browned truffle butter sauce and shaved truffles on top. If you’re wary of mixing truffles and dessert, I promise this dish will change your mind (and your life).

Rich bittersweet chocolate lava cake with a truffle butter sauce and shaved black truffles — the stuff of dreams!

Best Distillery: Aura Distillery

Drink This: Istrian Brandy

Location: Buzet

Website: www.aura.hr

This distillery looks quite unassuming from the outside, but step through the front doors and you’ll be transported into another world of cozy stone walls, cave-like dining areas, and more Istrian food and beverage products than you’ll possible be able to sample.

But please try to taste as much as possible! This facility produces some of the most delicious chocolates (try the lavender and olive oil chocolate!), olive oils, jams, vinegars, and other foodstuffs, and you won’t want to miss out on any of it.

Come hungry to try not only the brandies, but also the chocolate, honeys, jams, and other food goods at Aura

But what you really came here for was the famous Istrian brandies produced by Aura, brewed in giant copper vessels right in the back of the facility. Get a quick tour of the facility and smell the different brews — some with apples, pears, mistletoe, rose, fig, or some other concoction of fruits, herbs, and spices.

Then sample some on your own, picking from the list of 20+ homemade brandies and accompanied by a plate of cheeses and charcuterie. My favorite was the almond & olive brandy… yum!

Aura’s Distillery’s famous brandy gin and tonic, accompanied by a cheese and charcuterie board

I also recommend trying Aura’s famous gin and tonic, made with nine spices, active coal, and a splash of teranino brandy. You may even be lucky enough to try their limited edition Mille Fruits Whiskey, with only 600 bottles in the entire world. It’s one of the best whiskeys I’ve tasted, and it has a price tag to match.

Some of Aura’s uniquely flavored brandied — try as many as you’d like!

Best Fine Dining: Restaurant Badi

Eat This: Chef’s Choice Tasting Menu

Location: Umag

Website: www.restaurant-badi.com

Tucked away on a side street in a town called Umag, this restaurant has a simple kind of romantic elegance, unpretentious despite its well-warranted Michelin Star. It’s the perfect place for a date night, or, if you’re a solo traveler like me, for a dress-up-and-treat-yo’self kind of night.

The first thing I absolutely loved about this restaurant was how the waiters sort of take command of your experience. They’ll ask how hungry you are (to determine if you should get the 3-, 5-, or more-course menu), ask if there’s anything you don’t eat or if you have any allergies, and then invite you to sit back and enjoy the experience.

Restaurant Badi’s simple yet elegant interior

Deconstructed pistachio and white chocolate mascarpone cheesecake

Every dish that they served was just as simple and elegant as the restaurant itself, made with outstanding and fresh ingredients, and interesting combinations of flavors that still showcase the star of the dish — expect unique dishes like sea bream tartare with berries and rosemary, and sea bass with lobster foam, along with some cozy staples like homemade pastas with truffle or seafood.

The aperitif cocktails and breads were perfect, as were the wines selected by my waiter to accompany the different courses of my meal. Not one bit of this meal went to waste, and I only wish I could come here regularly to see what else the chef surprises me with.

Sea bream tartare with raspberries, blackberries, and a rosemary dust

Crispy baked sea bass with tomato and queen scallop sauce, baby spinach, and lobster foam

Best Meat: Konoba Buscina

Eat This: Boskarin Fuzi (or anything else grilled in that giant brick oven)

Location: Bušćina

Website: www.konoba-buscina.hr

You wouldn’t know it from it’s humble setup and family-run atmosphere, but head to the bathrooms and you might see a framed Michelin Guide plaque hidden in a corner somewhere. Rather, what steals the show here is the massive brick oven placed smack in the middle of the restaurant, giving you a full view of the mouth-watering, locally sourced meats grilling to perfection.

You’ll find some delicious pastas and other dishes on the menu here, but I highly recommend trying a meat dish because really, meats steal the show at Konoba Buscina. I recommend the fuzi with boskarin (Istrian ox), which an Istrian specialty — it’s tender and grilled absolutely perfectly, full of flavor, and probably one of the best meats you’ll have in Croatia.

Fuzi with melt-in-your-mouth Istrian ox (called “boskarin” in the area) and toasted almonds

Best Winery: Kozlovic

Drink This: Malvazija Wine

Location: Momjan

Website: www.kozlovic.hr

The winery itself is quite famous for its modern architecture as well as its outstanding wines, which you’ll find on many menus around Istria. But visiting Kozlovic Winery while in Istria is a must — it really is the one of the best wineries in Istria.

The views of the rolling hilly vineyards are spectacular, and you can enjoy them from the terrace or as a picnic on the grass. You’ll find some of the best traditional Istrian wines here like Malvazija (Kozlovic’s flagship wine), Teran, and Muscat, as well as some Kozlovic specialty dessert wines, and others.

Kozlovic offers blankets for guests that would like to sip their wine on the grass

Call ahead to book a tour of the facility, and be sure to give yourself time to try a few glasses accompanied by the truly impressive “bites” of food and dessert. Expect thoughtful tasting dishes like wine-cooked Istrian sausages, local mushroom toasts, and this amazing little dessert with dried figs poached in Muscat with mascarpone and amaretto-soaked cookies — truly a step up from the standard winery snacks you’ll find anywhere else in the world.

The most thoughtful, delicious wine-tasting hors d’oeuvres I’ve ever had! Toast with local mushrooms, Istrian sausage cooked in wine and herbs and served atop a celery puree, and fresh orange juice ceviche

Tips For Your DIY Istria Food Tour

I recommend staying in Istria at least 4 days to be able to explore the different towns, enjoy the leisurely & laid-back vibes of the region, and of course — try all the food and drinks you possibly can. I stayed one week, capping off the end of my trip with a couple of days in seaside Rovinj (excellent seafood everywhere here!).

Renting a Car

Part of the fun of Istria is renting a car and driving around to the beautiful little towns dotting the countryside, each completely charming and unique from one another. What better way to plan a road trip than by driving from amazing meal to amazing meal?

If you plan your Istria road trip around this food guide, you’ll leave with a good feel for the different Istria towns as well as a very satisfied, full stomach. The roads are good and easy to navigate with GPS, so you don’t need to be worried about getting lost or stranded driving around a foreign country. Simply download the offline Google Map of the area in case you lose service, and you’ll do great.

Accommodation

For accommodation, I stayed at an amazing and conveniently-located old farmhouse Airbnb in a town called Momjan, run by a wonderful host (who is also a great cook and talented artist). The Airbnb was only about 30 minute to an hour away from nearly any town and all the restaurants, plus you’re right at the border of Slovenia if you fancy a day trip.

For $40 off your first Airbnb booking, sign up with this link!

In Rovinj, I stayed at The Melegran Boutique Hotel (with an amazing pomegranate martini) right in Old Town. I definitely recommend this hip, centrally-located hotel!

Breakfast prepared by my Airbnb host, Gail, on the beautiful farmhouse patio

Let’s Go.

A trip to Istria, Croatia is a must for any foodie traveling in Croatia. Along with world-famous foods, wines, and brandies, you’ll also be one of the few tourists to get to explore the ancient Italian-influenced villages and enjoy the stunning views around nearly every corner.

Whether you’re making a standalone trip to Istria (totally worth it), or whether you’re adding it to your Croatia or Balkans road trip, you won’t want to miss these best places to eat and drink in Istria!

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Have any questions about where to eat and drink in Istria, Croatia? Have any favorite spots to add to the list? Let me know in the comments below!