And if you described Croatian food, it may remind you of Italian with a little Hungarian, but it is its own cuisine. It makes up the menu at Veslo, located Broadway in the heart of Astoria. She is doing that at Veslo, a 3-year old restaurant that's a draw for its seafood in particular.
And Boris Nanjara is at the helm of this ship. And one of those dishes is the Brudetto A La Adriatico. Away from the heat, Boris loads a pan with tomatoes, onions, garlic, parsley and white wine. Then lots of fresh seafood that's topped with a tomato sauce and fish stock, covered and steamed. Boris serves it over pasta, or you can opt for polenta. Either way, it's a staple on the Dalmatian coast. So for Croatians, this is a taste of home. Serve over linguini or polenta, whatever your preference.
Serves people. Albany man arrested after woman found stabbed to death on LI. From Italy come seafood stews and pasta; from Greece, cheeses and grilled fish; from Austria, pastries such as palacinka and strudel. Ivanac grew up poor in a small coastal village. He left his family at the age of 16 to work as a waiter on a luxury cruise liner and jumped ship in New York.
In Croatia, his family had produced wine and olive oil-not exactly a lucrative business in those days-but now the farm supplies the restaurant with cured meats, cheeses, olive oils and homemade grappas. To get in the mood, we started off with a bottle of red Croatian wine, Dingac, from the Peljesac region, and dalma, a platter of charcuterie and cheeses from the coast.
He was smartly dressed in a black shirt and dark striped tie. As he leaned over the table to identify the meats and cheeses he'd just set down, his tie landed squarely in a dish of olive oil. It was like a skit from Fawlty Towers.
We all laughed as he dabbed his tie with a napkin and started again. Are you Croatian? Ivanac's estate. It had a rich, meaty flavor, like duck prosciutto. The platter also held smoked beef; a sausage similar to mortadella also brought in from his farm ; a mild, creamy feta, manchego and sheep's-milk cheeses; and black and green olives marinated in garlic and herbs.
It was the kind of simple dish you imagine ordering in a local cantina at sunset with a glass of the house wine. But the food at Trio is more ambitious, and the chef casts his net far and wide.
Crab Louis is not exactly a traditional Croatian dish I believe it dates back to the 's, to some fancy hotel like Delmonico's. Rich folds the crab meat into a pink mayonnaise and serves it with slices of avocado in an updated presentation, on a radicchio leaf.
The grilled calamari took us back to the Adriatic coast: It's a little tough, but nicely charred and served with a wonderful, light balsamic sauce. The seafood salad is also fresh and clean-tasting, mixed with potatoes and onions in a red-wine vinaigrette. Rich has altered some Croatian dishes for American tastes, such as the strukli, turnovers that are normally made with pastry.
He uses a pasta dough instead, to make large ravioli that he fills with a seductive mixture of goat's-milk ricotta, salt cod, raisins and pine nuts, and serves with a roasted-garlic beurre fondue. The ravioli were a bit leathery around the edges, but the filling was wonderful. Just about every seafood dish seems to be on target here. Poached monkfish with grilled prawns, braised leeks and pommes maximes is a terrific combination, even though it comes with what is described on the menu as "a year-old balsamic drizzle.
My favorite was the buzara, a subtle seafood stew in a tomato white-wine broth laced with chunks of fish, scallops, shrimp, potatoes and clams. On another night at Trio, we had a different waiter who was not quite as charming as the one who'd dipped his tie in oil. We ordered a mixed grill for two that consisted of kielbasa, a Croatian sausage called cevapcici a blend of pork, lamb and beef , lamb chops and steak.
The dish was garnished with artichoke chips and a bright-pink coleslaw made with red and white cabbage marinated in a red-onion vinaigrette, and it came with three different sauces. I asked what they were. He shrugged. Brown sauce. After dinner, Trio offers a digestif on the house one of the restaurant's many nice touches. Of the dozen or so house-made grappas to choose from, we tasted the "fig," the "home blend" and what our waiter described as "wild grasses.
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