Name: K.užina
Address: Split, HR

A Bib Gourmand room inside Split's old town, a short walk from Diocletian's Palace, where the young chef Toni Boban cooks Dalmatian small plates built on the morning's catch from the city fish market, Mediterranean and unfussy, at a price the guide still calls fair.

By Dimitris Stathopoulos

The cooking

Mediterranean cooking rooted in Dalmatia and the Adriatic that laps the coast below the city. Toni Boban is a young chef who has stayed close to home, reworking the food he grew up on rather than reaching for something borrowed, and much of what reaches the plate is bought that morning at Split's fish market a few streets away. Fish and shellfish carry the menu, read off the day's landings rather than a fixed card, with a shrimp risotto and an amberjack in beurre blanc among the dishes the guide singles out. The cooking keeps its edges modern without losing the plainness of a home kitchen, and even the desserts stay in that register, a fig served with polenta and yoghurt ice cream. The room is small and plainly dressed, the chefs in view as they work, with a quieter courtyard terrace at the back for anyone who wants to be out of the throng. There is a shorter list for children, which tells you the sort of table it means to be.

Why it is in VANE

It carries a Bib Gourmand in the Michelin Guide Croatia 2026, the mark the guide reserves for good cooking at a fair price, and in a city whose old town fills each summer with rooms chasing the tourist euro that distinction counts for something. The case for it is the idea it runs on: a chef from Split cooking Split, buying off the same market stalls the city's grandmothers use and putting the catch on the plate the day it lands, for money most visitors can still justify. It sits inside the walls near Diocletian's Palace, where the easy move is a view and a markup, and it holds its line on the food instead. A researched profile, drawn from the restaurant's own record and Michelin's listing, not a first-hand VANE visit.

Where

Kraj Svete Marije 1, in Split's old town near Diocletian's Palace

Kitchen

Chef Toni Boban, cooking the Split fish market's daily catch

Michelin

Bib Gourmand, Michelin Guide Croatia 2026

Style

Mediterranean, seafood-led Dalmatian small plates

Best for

The shrimp risotto, or the day's fish from the market

VANE selection. Chosen with a critic's eye and judged independently. It's here because we judged it, not because it paid.
On this profile: a researched profile, drawn from the restaurant's own record and reporting, not a claim of a first-hand visit. Where we have eaten there, the review says so.
Image: original VANE artwork; photography to follow.

K.užina

The cooking

Why it is in VANE

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