The story
A few steps from the main square of the Croatian capital, in the atrium of the Zagreb Youth Theatre, chef Filip Horvat offers an innovative gastro experience. The setting is a contemporary yet dramatic theatre interior, fitting for the culinary performances that unfold within.
Chef Horvat deconstructs the traditional standards of Croatian cuisine with surgical precision and reconstructs them in unexpected and exciting ways. Each plate is a show of character. The kitchen team, assembled with sous chefs who bring experience from European Michelin-starred restaurants, sources ingredients with notable care. Fruit and vegetables come from the sellers’ own gardens, picked the same morning. Meat is selected from small, trusted producers. Fish is caught fresh from the Adriatic the previous night. Olive oil and truffles arrive from nearby Istria.
The menu is structured like a theatrical performance. For lunch, guests choose from the show, from prologue to epilogue. Dinner offers chef Filip’s Weekend Festival in six courses or the Season Festival in nine courses, promising a series of surprises and unexpected twists. This is modern cuisine at its most personal, where the bounty of Croatia is transformed with precision and creativity.
Recognition
Ambience
Details
History
The restaurant TheAtrium in the city centre, in the atrium of the ZKM (Zagreb Youth Theatre), is divided into two parts. The first, partially glazed, with a simple and modern decoration, is visible, and the kitchen counter looks like a theatre stage on which the cooking team prepares dishes. In the second part of the restaurant, decorated in darker tones, a more intimate program takes place, as behind a stage curtain which provides guests with privacy. However, the final act of the show anyway takes place on the plates. The concept of the menu has been almost the same for years: seven appetizers, three soups, thirteen main courses and five, six desserts. But this simplicity is interwoven with dishes made from fish and seafood, vegetables, beef, poultry, veal, Black Slavonian pig, pasta and risotto, supplemented with seasonal ingredients, such as wild asparagus, Swiss chard, spring onions, beets, pumpkin or mushrooms. Seafood cappuccino with scallops, scampi, squid in a roasted tomato sauce, with potato foam and chili, is a good choice to start a feast in the theatre of taste. For the main course, we recommend the tried and tested classics, Beef Wellington – a beefsteak in puff pastry with mushroom cream and Drniš prosciutto and potatoes – and Wiener Schnitzel – perfectly breaded veal with potato salad. Performed by chef Filip Horvat these seemingly classic dishes have a special taste. A good selection of wines by the glass and a pistachio soufflé with ice cream nicely round off the pleasant gastronomic experience.
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