A restaurant-owner from Zagreb is not impressed with her colleagues from the Adriatic coast.
“It is wonderful to be a restaurant owner on the Adriatic coast. You open a restaurant in some small hole somewhere. You improvise the ventilation system. Immediately, at the beginning of the tourist season, you reach an agreement with the local sanitary authority to leave you alone. After three months of selling frozen Patagonian squid for 160 kunas per portion to wealthy British teenagers, you close shop sometime in late September and spend the rest of the year preparing a new cheat menu for the next year” – this is how it looks like to Josipa Perković, a 45-year-old owner of the Fini Kutić restaurant in the Martinovka neighbourhood in Zagreb, which is one of the most popular food outlets not just in the district, but far beyond as well, reports Jutarnji List on September 6, 2017.
“I want to publicly and clearly say this – the catering industry on the Adriatic coast is a fraud. Their motto is: ‘Come here, we will take away your money, and you never have to return because there will always be new fools.’ And they are right. They serve well-off British and Australian youth who do not know what a squid is. If they get 20 to 30 such guests a day, they have been covered for the whole year,” said Josipa.
As she was saying this, a repairman came to her restaurant to improve the ventilation system, which is a technical precondition for which dozens of restaurants in Zagreb are often being punished by strict inspectors, paying hefty penalties and even forcing some of them to close for weeks. On the other hand, according to Josipa, restaurants in coastal areas are exempt from strict bureaucratic procedures and visits by inspectors.
After spending a couple of weeks of her summer vacation in southern Dalmatia, she says there is an impression that the Adriatic restaurateurs, motivated by the record number of tourists this year, have decided to maximise their earnings with practices which can usually be found just at the most controversial corporations.
First example
In a restaurant on southern Dalmatian island, Josipa orders pork loin. After a little bit of waiting, the plate comes. There is one slice of bread cut into two parts, slightly toasted, with two medallions of the pork on it, barely bigger than a five-kuna coin, covered with sauce, and served with radish sprouts.
Price: 260 kunas
“Excuse me, what is it exactly which costs 260 kunas here”, she asks the waiter.
“Well you know, it is because of this sprouts of… what do they call it…”
“You mean radish sprouts?”
“That’s right, radish.”
Quite weird. A week earlier, Josipa bought a bag of radish sprouts at a Zagreb market. One package cost 20 kunas, with enough sprouts for at least ten meals.
Second example
In another restaurant on the same island, Josipa ordered a portion of the mussel stew.
She knows that mussels are fresh, she saw them that morning being delivered by the fishermen. The purchase price for caterers is eight kunas per kilogram.
Price in restaurant: 150 kunas per serving.
The quality is nothing to be proud of. They are swimming in rolls of soft onions, little water and the cheapest tomato concentrate.
“How it is possible that in Zagreb I buy mussels for 25 kunas per kilogram. I sell a portion for 45 kunas, give every guest a free fish soup and manage to cover myself financially so I can survive the whole year? And I add fresh garlic and parsley, and top-of-the-range sherry, while their mussel float in a bowl of decomposed onions from Konzum, maybe with the addition of dried parsley from a bag,” said Josipa, who used to work until five years ago for a marketing department of a major publishing house, when she finally decided to dedicate her time to what she enjoys the most, which is cooking.
She has had her restaurant for a little less than two years. Her offer is based on Croatian spices and meals, with an average price of 40 kunas per meal, with ingredients which are daily bought at Zagreb marketplaces. She has no microwave oven or a freezer in her restaurant, which should be a guarantee that the food is always fresh and freshly prepared. On the tables, there are bottles of expensive and premium olive oil from growers on Šolta and in Vrsar.
“And what is on tables in Dalmatia? Cheap consumer olive oil from the supermarket for 20 kunas per litre, which makes the fish taste awful. How can a restaurant owner dare to use such oil with fish?” said Josipa.
Third example
Josipa and her friends visited a well-known restaurant on another southern Dalmatian island. She ordered fish, and after half an hour of waiting there came a plate with a bowl of sour cream over fish, decorated with a slice of lemon. Looking at the fish, she asked the waiter. “What should I do with a lemon? Squeeze it on the cream, so that everything gets clogged up?” He said that it was the speciality of their chef. “Well, say hello to your chef, but tell him I will not eat it,” said Josipa and left the restaurant.
Dalmatian restaurants mostly use Cromaris fish, which is good but costs only 50 kunas per kilogram. Adriatic caterers sell some of their fish for 650 kunas per kilogram. “I have nothing against the Cromaris fish, but if it costs 50 kunas, how can you sell it to me for 13 times higher price? It is normal that everyone wants to make money, but I do not agree with the fact that somebody is trying to make a fool out of me,” said Josipa, recalling some of the prices which shocked her this summer.
An octopus for two for 500 kunas in Primošten, wine for 40 kunas per glass, although in a shop in can be bought for 21 kunas per bottle. In a famous Dalmatian tavern, instead of homemade soup, she received an instant tomato soup made from a bag. A small bottle of Jana for 38 kunas.
“How come that the same bottle is 11 kunas in my restaurant, although I buy it from a broker, while they buy it directly from the Velpro distribution centre in Dubrovnik? And they get an additional discount due to large quantities. Contrary to the claims of the islanders, who say their prices are high due to the cost of transportation, they actually start from a better starting position,” explained Josipa.
There are also unbelievable differences in the prices of fish in coastal restaurants and those in Zagreb. First of all, at coastal restaurants, it is not possible to get sardines, which are not offered because restaurant owners cannot earn as much as they want. Also, the fish for all restaurants come from the same source, but restaurants in Zagreb have to pay transport costs, so it immediately costs 20 percent more than on the coast. Still, when it arrives at the table, the fish will be as much as ten times more expensive in the coastal restaurants than in Zagreb.
She has invested about 10,000 euros in her restaurant so far, a good part of which went to pay for various fees, from which she has little benefit. One of the biggest absurdities is the fact that she could not get an operating permit before fulfilling minimum technical conditions, although several restaurants had been operating in the same premises for years – each of them had to get the same licence over and over again. “Nothing has changed here, everything looks the same and serves the same purpose, and I still have to get the certificate which was already taken by five owners before me. I must not forget the fee I pay to the Croatian Chamber of Commerce. That costs me 1,600 kunas a year, and I wonder what use do I have from that institution,” continued Josipa.
Due to anonymous complaints, in a year and a half, Josipa has been visited by various inspections five times, and she has paid about 13,000 kuna of penalties, fees and expenses. Every time they find something, and even if they do not find it – the cost of the inspection has to be paid by the restaurant. It is entirely illogical: if an inspection visits a restaurant to take food samples on someone’s anonymous complaint, even if it turns out that all the samples are completely healthy – the inspection will send a bill for the analysis to the restaurant owner.
In the meantime, Josipa estimates that 85 percent of restaurants on the coast do not meet the minimum technical conditions – starting from ventilation, sewerage, and the fact that many of them keep water in plastic canisters.
In the media, you can often hear calls for small businesses to be helped, but Josipa disagrees. “Please, just do not help me. Nobody has benefited from their support so far.”
Translated from Jutarnji List.
