Slano Restaurants

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Another night while eating at a local seaside outdoor café called ‘Mirakul’, two older guys sitting at the bar began singing old time Croatian songs with the jukebox and it was real nice. After dinner little Luca is running around the place and seems to be gravitating around the ice cream freezer with a glass case. Soon thereafter, we witnessed Luca having his first ice cream cone ever. Man, his eyes were so wide open with excitement. He knew he found a great thing. Later a gathering of little kids from around the restaurant, ended up in the back yard of the owner’s house which was attached, playing and kicking soccer balls around. What a simple pleasant night out. Dinner at ‘Mirakul’ is like many little Croatian restaurants. The waiter brings out a tray of the various whole fish fresh from today’s catch and you get to choose what your dinner selection will be. We did this several times and the meals are always sooo good.

In Slano there was some fest going on one night. It started quite late, but there were still plenty of families and kids. The next morning we slept until 10:15 am, something that hasn’t happened in 20 years! One event was a sack race, with the kids using white kitchen garbage bags to run in. The winning prize was some ice cream given in a large stainless steel type bowl. I guess one had to eat it quickly.

The master of ceremonies spoke everything first in Croatian, then German, then English. Some of the translations were hilarious, like at the end of the night to announce the main event, the gran finale; he says “For the great final, a fast beer event”. “If you want to partake, you have to come up see the panel of judges and they would look at your belly”. It ends up he was talking about a beer drinking contest.

Favorite Dish: Tony and Darla, friends from Florida, arrived the next day during their two-week tour of Croatia. We all took the boat out to an island restaurant and had grilled whole fish. After dinner, the owner brings us a plain jug of blackberry brandy; the bottom 1/3 of jug is a mash of marinated crushed berries. Actually, it was real good stuff – I had two shots! We also drank rose liquor on another night with some neighbor ladies, who called us over to drink shots with them on their patio. Now that was some tuff stuff! I think there were long strands of grass in the bottle, which of course we are told that it “aids the digestion.” We brought back a 2-liter Pepsi bottle of homemade olive oil from one of the local ladies that “J” knows. We were told that this is not for cooking but for use on bread, lettuce, eating, etc. It was full-flavored stuff, which is also “good for the digestion.”