If you go to Dubrovnik, you might be amazed about it's old city, beautiful seaside... and prices in restaurants that are adjusted to salaries of western Europeans. So if you are from Eastern Europe you might find yourself in situation where everything is ridiculously expensive especially when you count exchange rates. For example the worth of croatian kuna in polish currency is about 0,5. So you might expect that prices wouldn't be bigger than polish ones. But unfortunately in Dubrovnik - they are.
Expensive, especially if you want to eat in the Old Town, inside the City Walls or near it. There you will pay a lot of money, you can be sure of that. So, if you don't want to waste all of your money you should try to find a restaurant further from the most famous and popular historical places.
So we decided to ask our landlord where to eat and he recomended Konoba Tabak (Vukovarska 34).
We lived in private house about 2 km away from the City Walls so we were looking for something in our neighbourhood. :)
DECOR
Tabak is a small place but has a big outside area (not very pleasant because it's almost on the parking lot). We haven't really seen inside because we were there in summer so we wanted to catch the weather :)* Outside you have many tables which are clean and under the shades. There was a fan... but it wasn't enough for Croatian summer. ;)
*However we do know that the bathroom is clean and really nice.
What is imortant, the restaurant is a bit hidden because it's not just next to the street. You have to walk inside the backyard, pass one building and then you'll see the place. Thankfully near the gate is a sign and today's menu. :)
WHAT TO EAT
Konoba Tabak offers regional, really tasty food. Each day you will have some specials to choose from and some menu a'la carte. The food is local. Most of the clients are Croatian and service is not really used to tourists but they do their best.
But the menu is just a suggestion, beacause they don't prepare every dish every day - they just don't have all ingredients (e.g. they couldn't serve some fish beacause that day they wasn't able to buy it on the local market).
Menu looks like this:
First day we got black risotto which is a risotto with cuttlefish ink and seafood...
And pasta with meat pieces...
Some time later we got seasonal grilled fish which for me was red mullet...
There is a story about this red mullet because I didn't know names of the fish and I didn't know which one I want. Waiter brought to me a platter of fresh fish and let me choose the one I wanted. It was really cool because fish looked fresh and tasty (all of them). In Poland they wouldn't show you what they will be cooking for you ;) (in most of the restaurants).
And for Bartek grilled sardines. On the side you can see potatoes and collard greens.
And the third day Bartek got cevapi
and I got beef stew. It was tasty... but I'm not really a fan of cooked potatoes. And unfortunately that day they didn't have almost anyhing from the menu. Just like they were short of everything.
PRICES
Prices are really good. They are lower that in most of the restaurants of Dubrovnik. Sometimes even 40-50%. 50 kunas for cuttlefish ink risotto and 47 for grilled fresh fish. It is really affordable.
SERVICE
Waiters that served us were really nice and helpful. One of them had problems with English but he tried and we were able to get our food :) However last visit was quite a let down because we couldn't get from our waiter an information what we can eat and in the end it came out that he got us more expesive beer, that we didn't really wanted. But it was ok.
Yes, he was doing his best to explain everything. :)
SUMMARY
For me it was one of the best restaurants during our vacations.
Very nice place with great food, especially seafood, and fine prices. :)
Decor: *** (3/5)
Food: **** (4/5)
Prices: **** (4/5)
Summary: **** (4/5)
