Reserve a table at Zori Restaurant.

A table on Vinogradišće bay

Zori Restaurant has served this bay since 1947, on a terrace that sits just above the water at Vinogradišće, on Palmižana in the Pakleni Islands. The room is small and the kitchen is the kind of place where the chef writes the card by hand each afternoon, after the morning boats have come in and he has seen what the day actually brought. There is no printed menu to choose from in advance: the boats decide, and the garden decides, and what arrives at the kitchen at sunrise is what arrives at the table at dusk.

Chef Siniša Jevrosimov cooks in the Mediterranean tradition with the occasional touch of Japanese precision, on a wood-charcoal gradele that burns hardwood until late. The catch comes from the morning boats; the herbs and vegetables come from the garden a few steps away, cut close to service. Lunch is the long, slow Adriatic kind, taken between noon and three with the bay at full colour. Dinner begins as the light goes gold and the gradele finds the fire, and the last table is never hurried.

The season runs from May through October, lunch and dinner every day. Reserve below with live availability and instant confirmation, and the kitchen confirms the card with you when you sit down. Until then, it belongs to the wind.