As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes on the 28th of September, 2019, although the summer is well and truly over and we’re now at the very end of September and opening the door to autumn, the Maestral Hotel within the Aminess Hotels group of Laguna Novigrad is still very much full.
Last night, each of the eighty seats at their a la carte restaurant, Oliveto, were filled thanks to this year’s finest Aminess Wine & Gourmet Nights dinner, a fine-dining event with renowned Istrian chef David Skoko. This is a project that is now going on for the third year in a row, every last Friday from April to October, and aims to promote the richness of Istrian cuisine and wine, as well as present local seasonal foods.
The event is designed in a way that prepares guests several meals in an open kitchen, so that guests can not only watch everything that is being done, they can also peek into pots and pans and talk to their chefs in breaks or take pictures with them as a souvenir. The dinner costs 350 kuna per person, and guests can combine it with various packages in line with their stay at the hotel, from wellness to the Wine & Walk event, a unique walk with a glass of wine in hand, with tastings of local wines and Istrian snacks. As you can imagine, this is a very popular package.
The Aminess Dinner is also an opportunity to introduce young promising chefs from across the Republic of Croatia and the wider region to each other in Novigrad, and the response so far has great, David Skoko revealed.
“This is my favourite guest-event that I do throughout the year, and I work with my friends and colleagues from Croatia and abroad, most often from Slovenia, and the top winemakers whose wines we pair with our dishes. I’m very pleased to hear back from many young people, chefs from different parts of the country, who offer themselves to come to work with us and experience an atmosphere that is extremely good. We, the ten or twelve of us, enter the kitchen early in the morning and ”rock” all day long in order to actually make it look so laid back and elegant , but it’s really serious and the level of chef engagement is demanding,” stated Skoko.
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