Agli Amici Rovinj

Agli Amici Rovinj is the second restaurant of the Scarello family — whose Udine flagship carries two Michelin stars — and as of 2026 it is the only restaurant in Croatia to hold two stars of its own. It opened in 2021, during the pandemic, in a glass-walled room at the end of the Grand Park Hotel's promenade, and held one star within three months. The second arrived in 2024. The climb was, by modern Michelin standards, startling.

Chef Simone De Lucca runs the kitchen under Emanuele Scarello's supervision, and the cooking lives at the specific frontier where Istrian produce meets Friulian technique. There is no à la carte — three tasting menus, six to twelve courses, priced with the seriousness of the project. Signatures include a hand-rolled cjarson filled with smoked ricotta, fig and pine; langoustine tartare with Istrian olive oil and sea buckthorn; and a Boškarin ox dry-aged forty days and served with a reduction built on the bone.

The room is long, glassy and directed at the water. Tables are widely spaced; the service brigade outnumbers the diners. Sommelier Valentina Benci walks a wine list that reaches from Friuli and northern Istria into the deeper cellars of Burgundy and Alsace, with a small but very considered natural-wine shelf. The pairings are the correct order to make here; the sommelier's judgement is better than most guests' instincts.

This is not a cheap meal by any European benchmark, but it is priced considerably below its two-star counterparts in Paris, Tokyo or Copenhagen. For the cooking on offer it represents genuine value, and the room's quiet — the Promenade Plaza at 9.30pm in September is more or less silent — means the food stays central to the evening in a way few equivalent restaurants can still promise.

Agli Amici is the single best table on the eastern Adriatic coast for impressing a client who does not impress easily. The two stars provide the framing; the room's restraint provides the relief; the sourcing and cellar close the argument. If the trip has to justify itself, this is where you seat the decision-maker. It is equally the room for the milestone — a fiftieth, a significant anniversary, an occasion that deserves a serious evening.