Ice cream in Croatia

Walking on the streets of Croatia – either in Zagreb or Dubrovnik – I kept passing by people eating ice cream. Adults and children alike, from cones or paper cups. Ice cream was being carried as coffee typically is in London. Of course, it’s not like I don’t see people eat ice cream in the streets elsewhere. It was just that most people were eating it everywhere at any time. 

I definitely wanted to see what was so special about ice cream in Croatia. When I googled “ice cream and Croatia” a few articles popped up about Ledo, a Croatian ice cream brand that has won multiple international awards for being the best ice cream in the world. I had no clue ice cream was so ingrained in Croatian culture – I guess I would always associate it with Italian gelato.

Ironically, the below ended up being one of my personal favourite photographs from Dubrovnik. The two coned ice creams, left there, abandoned, melting in the Dalmatian sun. what happened? Did the owner dislike the taste? Did they feel too full? Or had to run somewhere and decided to leave it there? It looked like a piece of art, so perfectly displayed, and yet disconcerting.

The problem was, not sure if because of the heat, I was not feeling that hungry, particularly for sweet foods. The first ice cream I did get I threw it away, half-eaten. It was way too sweet and it was only making me thirstier. But when I saw this lovely place, called Pepino’s (pepino actually means cucumber in Portuguese, so I suppose there was an immediate connection in my brain relating the freshness of a cucumber salad with a not so sweet treat) I decided that was the place I was going to get serious about ice cream. Plus, they did claim to serve the best ice cream in Dubrovnik.

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There were multiple flavours available. My favourite ice cream flavour of all time is Straciatella. Something that often doesn’t quite exist as a concept in other countries, so I went for the cookie dough flavour. It was definitely really good – but I didn’t eat enough ice cream to be able to tell you if this is indeed the best place to go. I can tell you that it was quite nice and cheap (I do not remember the price, but based on the photo above I believe I only paid 16 kunas, about 2 euros.

That was all for today 🙂 get yourself an ice cream this week. Can you tell where did you have the best ice cream of your life? Mine was definitely in Florence, Italy.

Love, Nic