Split Cafe Restaurant

PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIA
Among the fast food joints, the multi-cultural bain-maries and pictorial Asian menus of suburbia, it’s refreshing to find a place with a self-taught chef who cooks by taste, has built her menu around the nostalgic dishes of her childhood and who cooks grilled whole fish perfectly to order. Nada Mihelcic, from Bukova near the Hungarian border, was formerly a presenter on Croatian radio in Sydney. She says, “It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in Australia, every migrant has memories and nostalgia for the dishes of their homeland. And that’s how I cook, tasting all the time to recreate those flavours.”

So, along with mainstream steak sandwiches, calamari rings, sizzling garlic prawns and mixed grills on the dinner menu, are Split’s real attractions, such as goulash – authentically as much soup as stew and redolent of the sweet paprika of Hungary – similarly the chicken paprika. Cervapcici are made in-house by a Moslem Bosnian friend and thus with beef – no pork – are wonderfully flavoured and light, and served with sour cream. Other highlights come in the form of a simple, fresh cabbage and roast red capsicum salad and, of course, apple strudel made in-house by another friend. And then there is the whole grilled snapper, brought in two or three times a week, the skin crisply charred, the flesh beautifully firm, moist and sweet, prompting memories of the Adriatic. Wonderful.

Graeme Phillips