I’d heard great things about the restaurants on the Adriatic coast, so here’s my chance to try them out, because as you may have read, I wasn’t particularly enchanted by what my hotel had to offer.

After scouring a ton of blogs and websites (I never trust TripAdvisor, at least not as a single source of advice) to find my first restaurant in Split, the first one I tried was Süg, a restaurant specializing in typical local cuisine.

The restaurant is located right on the edge of the old town, making it easy to get to from all the sights within a 20-minute walk. And since it’s not in the pedestrian zone, your uber/taxi can drop you off right in front of it if you’re coming from elsewhere.

First of all, let’s recall the details of this trip.

The restaurant is located right on the edge of the old town, making it easy to get to from all the tourist attractions within a 20-minute walk. And since it’s not in the pedestrian zone, your uber/taxi can drop you off right in front of it if you’re coming from elsewhere.

Süg: the restaurant concept

As I said, Süg offers simple, traditional Croatian cuisine. You’ll learn that Süg (pronounced Shoog) means sauce, and that in Dalmatia there are some essential ingredients for making a good sauce.

A visit to the restaurant’s website may be more worrying, but don’t worry, it’s a typo: this isn’t a cannibal restaurant, and you won’t have to eat your cousin or a native’s cousin.

The setting at Süg

When you arrive, the restaurant is not on the street, but in a small courtyard accessed by a passageway.

The entrance doesn’t look like much.

As for the dining room, it matches the spirit of the place: simple and friendly.

The restaurant also has a lovely terrace in another courtyard on the side.

The menu at Süg

This review is the first in a series dedicated to the Croatian restaurants I’ve tried in Split and Dubrovnik, and Süg’s menu is the first opportunity to familiarize with the local cuisine.

Fish and seafood, meats in sauce, vegetables and Italian-inspired dishes, because let’s not forget that not only is Italy right across the street, but part of Croatia was once under Italian rule.

I ask about the size of the dishes: they’re all about the same size, so I can have what I want, in any order I like, and even try 3 dishes if I’m hungry.

As far as I’m concerned, I’ll go for the smoked swordfish carpaccio and the venison in sauce (knowing that I “risked” eating a lot of fish for 2 weeks…). The waiter is very friendly and will take all the time necessary to explain the dishes to me, which is appreciated.

The service and the dishes

My carpaccio arrives quite quickly.

An original presentation for a carpaccio: the slices of fish are rolled with rice inside. It is served with a caper sauce. The bread served with it is homemade.

First comment: for a “simple” restaurant, there’s a lot of effort put into the presentation. The rest is good and fresh, but the smokiness of the fish overpowers the taste of the rest.

Next comes the venison, which I seem to have understood is a traditional dish. If I understood the waiter’s explanation correctly, they caramelized brown sugar on the sheep’s milk cheese and added it to the sauce before eating.

It’s easy to see that the macaroni is homemade.

From a strictly photogenic point of view, it’s far from being the most Instagrammable (nor the healthiest) dish I’ve ever eaten, but it turned out to be delicious. Melt-in-the-mouth meat, delicious and tasty sauce that went just as well with the meat as with the pasta.

While the quantity served might have worried me at first, I finished my dish without any problem: it was just the right quantity.

Generally speaking, all the dishes I saw in the dining room were served in generous quantities, so there was no risk of hunger pangs at the end of the meal. On the other hand, I had hesitated not to take a second “light” starter to try another local dish…and I’m glad I didn’t, it would certainly have been too much.

However, I won’t be having dessert. Not that I didn’t want to, but (see below) the slowdown in service after the dish simply got the better of my patience, and my appetite was gone.

The meal was accompanied by an excellent Croatian wine (I’ll be finding throughout my stay that Croatia makes quite decent wines).

The meal ends with an excellent espresso.

Service at Süg

The service was both friendly and fast. The staff are very friendly and available, taking pleasure in explaining the dishes and making recommendations.

However, I did notice two periods: from my arrival to the end of the main course, the service was very attentive and perfectly paced, without excessive waiting or giving the impression that they were trying to serve you and get you to leave as quickly as possible.

Then, before they came to take the dessert order, I felt like I’d fallen into a space-time rift and when the waiter finally came to see me my state of mind had gone from “I can’t wait to have dessert” to “my eyes are closing and I want to go to bed”.

But this is a point on which I wouldn’t blame this restaurant, as it seems to me to be commonplace in many restaurants: there’s great vigilance over the rhythm of the main part of the meal, but you get the impression that the customer who switches to the dessert/coffee part takes a back seat. This impression is reinforced when dining alone: the time spent waiting seems much longer than when chatting with friends.

The atmosphere at Süg

It’s close to a good bistro atmosphere, totally in line with the place’s promise: it’s simple and convivial. Very quiet when I arrived, the room has become quite noisy over time, but that’s the nature of these places and the proof that people feel good here.

Bottom line

A real treat after a mixed experience the day before in one of Le Meridien’s restaurants, and the little service “bug” was more anecdotal than anything else, even if it did form part of my experience.

The menu is varied, the dishes representative of local cuisine and very well prepared, the service very friendly and the bill very reasonable, since including drinks, I paid 266 Kunas or…35 euros!

A little later, on my last evening in split, I hesitated between returning to Süg and trying out another restaurant in the old tourist town. As Süg was full, my choice was made quickly and in the end I regret not having thought of making a reservation beforehand. Not that the other restaurant disappointed me, but Süg’s value for money was just perfect.

Just to get a second opinion, I recommended Süg to a friend who was in Split a few days after me, and my excellent impression was confirmed, so much so that he returned twice.

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