Konoba Marjan — Restaurant in Grad Split

There's no question in my mind that this is the best restaurant in Split.

The reason for this is the owners obsession with fresh fish and his daily visits to the market to get the best produce from the Adriatic.

With a kitchen that does not have a freezer, you know this is a restaurant that offers the finest and freshest sea food.

Being reasonably well travelled across Croatia, and been a few of the highly regarded restaurants, the seafood here is second to none in my view.

Everything is cooked simply with again simple dressings and seasonings but done with sheer quality. Their olive oil is single origin and sourced from a private local producer that supplies no one else.

We had the seafood platter of day with scampi, prawns and mussels. The latter were voluptuous as you can see. The small prawns had edible shells that literally melted and were so sweet. Served with the bread baked freshly everyday in house to mop of rhe juices, the start to this meal could not have been better.

Next we opted for fish of the day - Scorpion fish. This was out of this world. Grilled ro perfection. The meat in the centre was pillowly. Utter finesse.

The wine selection focuses on some sublime Croatian wines - my advice after several visits is to try these. Ask the staff for selections. The Sladic winery is well represented. We had some vintages from them which are highly regarded. Grk is also one of the best wines I have ever tried, and I would highly recommend it.

The service and cleanliness here are, of course, first class.

Located in one of the most beautiful parts of the old city, I would make this something for a special evening in the heat of the Adriatic.

Thank you so much to the staff who all speak English and Italian very well just so...

A warning for future customers.

While the seafood was cooked well, our overall dining experience was tarnished by what we saw on the bill coupled with misleading pricing.

Before ordering we were shown a tray of the catch of the day, which included prawns. We were informed that the catch of the day was 420kuna/kg so we ordered sea bream and tiger prawns.

The bill arrived with the tiger prawns listed as "scampi" for 460kuna/kg. When we questioned the bill to the waiter, he informed us this was separate to the catch of the day and referred to the ala carte menu listing the price for scampi which he said also means tiger prawns. Catch of the day only included the fish that was on the tray.

We considered this misleading as: (1) he presented the catch of the day as what was on the plate and he pointed at the tiger prawns, thus including the prawns.

(2) the menu board at the front of the restaurant showed scampi and tiger prawns as two separate seafood items as part of the catch of the day

(3) if scampi are also tiger prawns, then why are there past photos on TripAdvisor where people have been actually served scampi i.e. the prawn with actual claws?

(4) we aren't experts at measuring seafood, but what we received we believe was not worthwhile, we received four tiger prawns that supposedly weighed 500g and a 700g sea bream, total bill approx. 570 kuna.

Additionally, the second and cheaper class of catch of the day was not available. One wonders is it ever available?

We walked out paying the bill, acknowledging what happened. Hope this helps other people when deciding to dine here.

To management: it might be worth mentioning to customers before they order prawns that they are a different price to the rest of 'catch...

The food was great. We had the octopus salat and then we shared a fish plate for two. Drinks were a beer and a wine recommended by the waiter (i don't know if he was the owner) which was great too.

We made a reservation (which i recommend), were served promply, there was no long waiting time for drinks or food. The waiter showed us the catches of the day and recommended us to share a fish plate what we did.

We had a great dinner, the staff was friendly and helped us fileting the fish.

After we finished eating (just to mention, the octopus salad is extremely good) we were a little bit forgotten by the waiters (we did not want to order something but it would have been nice to ask).

When some new guests arrived (they got the table a brief time after 21:30, they had a reservation at 21:15, but the guests before them were not gone yet) they wanted to order shrimps which were out (honestly it was late and they serve fresh food / fish cought on the same day so that can happen). So they decided to leave what lead into a discussion with our waiter. He was upset after they left and his anger was still at large when he came to us (we mentioned we wanted to pay before), I can understand his anger but it is not good to let it out on us. I mean he almost smashed the bill on our table. Not very professional, at least an excuse would have been nice.

Still, great food, nice location, moderate prizes for...