May 2024.

This is the only “Michelin-star” restaurant on this little Croatian island. I should say a bit about Michelinism to avoid being misunderstood as a gospel believer. It’s still consistent that the places they name in their guide nearly always justify the attention with very good food, nice service, and a pleasant place, presumably because their agents know what they’re doing and don’t identify themselves. The cost is usually 15 to 30% higher than for non-named comparable local competitors. We’ve been to restaurants of all the Michelin levels over the years and we stopped going to starred places once we figured out that the sweet spot on the quality-price curve includes named restaurants but not the ones that get a star. Once in awhile we try a one-star place just to see if things have changed: do Michelin honours still guarantee all-around quality along with cringeworthy cost.

Checkmarks on both for this one.

It’s on the classy tourist/restaurant walkway on the east side of the Korcula old town in a renovated “palace”. The old town occupies a beautiful quaint and deeply historic (Phoenicia) few-percent of the island. A bit more than half of the LD seats are across the way from the restaurant itself and directly on the Adriatic Sea. On the evening we arrived we were seated outside but sadly it was windy and a little too cold so we moved to the only view table in the dining room. Worse, halfway through dinner the wind died down. But we felt committed and so remained the only occupants of the lovely indoor space.

Servers were all men, all polite, engaging, knowledgeable, fluent anglophones. The wine guy helped us through the local list although I also peeked at the international pages where ordinary burgundy started at €350 (close to C$500). We went for a local white as we’ve been impressed with two of the varietals here. It was fragrant, clean, and adequately persistent. I also had one glass of local red to go with my choice of dinner and predictably it was clean but relatively unimpressive.

Menus are fixed, a six-course one or a modest three courses choosing from among the six, really one starter and one main plus a fixed dessert. An amuse-bouche featured five little bites including a savoury cone with salty meat filling and two other tiny flavours of seafood and the vegetarian mix, all delicious. It was clear the chef is not afraid of salt.

Robin chose prepared prawn with mousseline sauce, daikon and other accompanying vegetables and langoustine ravioli in a bisque with kimchee. I went for a “wagyu vs Black Angus” cold starter and a beef sirloin steak. Everything was beautifully presented. The prawn was perfect and the mousseline sauce slightly sharp and contrasting, the ravioli tender and packed with shellfish flavour. My two cold beef mouthfuls were interesting, the wagyu side softer but both of them succulent and flavorful in the unaccustomed form of soft cold beef. In retrospect when you hail from western Canada it’s never a safe bet to go for beef in Europe. There were artful tiny cooked-potato-wrapped bites of lamb stew and a very nicely-executed reduction sauce on my plate but the little steak was just nice cooked beef, no better than what we can buy at the Sechelt butcher.

Dessert was a fabulous heavy white chocolate mousse wrapped in hazelnut and apricot, smooth and thick and sweet. It was clear the chef is not afraid of sugar.

Well, we couldn’t fault anything about this dinner. We were treated respectfully but not obsequiously, the food tasted wonderful, and we loved the wine. In a counterfactual other go at this we would have stuck it outside outside on the water.

I was expecting to pay about C$400 but wasn’t shocked when the bill was that number in euros, more like close to C$600. Not the kind of money I would spend more than every couple of years. But this was still an exceptional dinner by our international standards.

Food 9.3 service 9.6 ambience 9.4 value 7.9 peace and quiet 9.5.