The Best Restaurant in Dubrovnik Is Not Even a Restaurant

People gravitate en masse to Dubrovnik for its stunning walled Old Town, for the sun, for the sea. Not the food. But you have to eat. And when you do, you need to plant yourself in the home of one person: Marija Papak.

The peka is served….

I first met Marija Papak during Dubrovnik’s Winter Festival. She had a food stall and she was trying to convince me to eat something called a sea egg. Because she’s so passionate about food, we quickly struck up a friendship based on eating. She’d invite me over and make me eat things such as a wild asparagus, in season on the southern Dalmatian Coast for about two weeks in February, which she had recently foraged.

Zlatko delivering the goods.

One night when I came over, her husband Zlatko had fired up the grill. But this was no ordinary grill. This was peka, a bell-like lid that slowly cooks meat via the hot embers and ashes that are placed atop. The food was amazing. It’s a Balkan speciality. And if you left Dubrovnik with a stomach ache from eating at the many tourist trap restaurants there, then you’ll regret not eating peka, in general, and Marija’s peka, in particular.

She now puts on incredible, gluttonous feasts on her lattice-covered terrace for visitors, via Marija Papak’s House. Peka has a way of rendering meat so tender you’ll swear there must be some kind of culinary black magic involved. But Marija is no witch. She’s a wizard. Her version of peka is the best on the planet. Hands down.

But that’s not all, Marija and her husband Zlatko pour bottomless bottles of local wine and rakija, the stomach-melting local fruit brandy. They make you stuff your face with melt-in-your-mouth Dalmatian prosciutto and locally made cheese, among other delights. And they regale you with stories about life in Dubrovnik.

After a few hours you’ll stumble out of the Papak home very full and very happy. Take it from me. I’ve done it a handful of times.