The Best Seafood Near Badi, by the Record

Two tasting menus, four courses or eight, and a terrace of exactly two tables looking out over the boats of a small Istrian harbour. Marina is an intimate, creative seafood restaurant on the first floor of an unremarkable building, the kind of place that makes the building irrelevant fast. The chef's touch with local catch runs modern and precise, and the front-of-house warmth keeps it from feeling precious. Book the terrace early, or someone else will.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The menu arrives by word of mouth, not paper, and the whole room feels a bit like being invited to someone's house for dinner. This small seafood spot in Novigrad's old town is built around raw fish, langoustines, tuna, prawns, lobster, sliced and dressed right in front of you with Istrian olive oil, salt, and pepper. A pasta course and dessert are there if you want them, but the catch is the point.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Dry-aged catch finished on a Japanese grill at a seafront fine dining spot on Porec's promenade, where the outdoor terrace looks straight out over the marina. The menu is deliberately short, maybe ten dishes, steerable into a tasting menu if you want the full arc. Seafood runs the show, handled with enough modern technique to feel considered rather than fussy. The Croatian wine list is worth a closer look.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A seafood restaurant in Izola's Hotel Marina, positioned so the windows face the harbour directly, which makes the view less a feature and more an argument. The menu follows the day's catch rather than a fixed list, so shellfish, reef fish, and pasta show up when the sea provides them. The kitchen produces its own olive oil, which finds its way into the dressings and quietly ties the whole thing together.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A family-run seafood restaurant in the shadow of the shipyards, in the old Panzano district that was purpose-built to house the workers who built the ships. The room is simple and the portions are generous, in the way that places run by families for a long time tend to be. The menu leans classic fish and seafood, and if you're feeling ambitious, there's a video on hand explaining how to make seafood risotto at home.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A small terrace right at the edge of Mošćenička Draga's harbour, with fishing boats close enough to make the seafood feel less like a menu item and more like a transaction. This is a casual konoba, the Croatian equivalent of a neighbourhood fish restaurant, holding a Michelin Bib Gourmand. The cooking is simple and unshowy, built around whatever came in that morning, with scampi alla busara, a dish locals claim was invented around here, among the regulars.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand

A few steps from one of the area's prettier beaches, this classic seafood restaurant doesn't bother with a printed menu: the catch of the day comes straight from local fishermen and the waiter tells you what's available. Kvarner langoustines, molluscs, and whatever swam nearby that morning take center stage, prepared simply enough that the fish does the talking. The terrace in summer, with its open water views, fills fast and forgives nothing about the journey.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A veranda inches from the Adriatic is the reason to book a table at this seafood restaurant in a small fishing village on the Kvarner coast. The menu follows whatever came off the boats, so expect shellfish, crustaceans sold by weight, raw preparations, and pasta, with the occasional modern turn on otherwise traditional cooking. Natural wines dominate a short, considered list. If a dish you wanted is off, the catch dictated that, and something better probably replaced it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The day's catch is laid out at the entrance so you can pick your dinner before you sit down, which sets the tone for this old-school seafood restaurant perched above the small harbour of Volosko. The Adriatic runs through everything on the plate, classical in approach with the occasional lighter creative touch. In winter, the glass veranda puts you practically on the water; in summer, the terrace takes over.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Adriatic fish wheeled out tableside is the move at this seafood restaurant inside Nova Gorica's Perla casino and hotel complex. Classical preparations run the show, from raw shellfish through to whole oven-roasted fish, with a nod to the Slovenian hinterland for anyone who wandered in from the slots and wants something from dry land. The Michelin Guide lists it among its selected restaurants.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A 1970s Triumph Spitfire convertible sits inside the dining room, which tells you something about this old-school Istrian seafood restaurant. The glassed-in veranda looks straight over Marina Veruda's yacht harbour, and the rooftop bar catches the sunset if you time it right. The kitchen runs on the local catch, grilled, baked, or buried in a salt crust, with Kvarner langoustines a regular fixture on the menu.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A seafood restaurant where the wine cellar runs to 25,000 bottles, heavy on Collio and Colli Orientali labels alongside the kind of large-format bottles that make serious collectors rearrange their plans. The kitchen leans classic, with the day's catch handled simply enough that the fish does the talking. San Giovanni al Natisone sits inland, but the menu reads like the Adriatic is just outside.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The catch of the day arrives at your table on a large tray so you can point to what you want, which tells you most of what you need to know about this seafood konoba on the southern tip of Istria. The chef is also the fisherman, so the menu follows the tides and the seasons rather than any fixed idea of what a restaurant should serve. Offal turns up in the appetizers alongside prime cuts, treated with enough confidence that it feels natural.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A white-on-white dining room a few blocks from the Jesolo seafront, where the kitchen leans hard into the grill and the catch comes in daily. This is a sit-down seafood restaurant, tablecloths and all, run by a couple who have been at it for decades and still work the floor themselves. In summer, a garden bar softens the formality. The family tends a kitchen garden on Sant'Erasmo, the vegetable island in the Venetian lagoon.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant