Guest Chef David Skoko

David Skoko is a chef and a fisherman, and both inform the other. His cooking comes from water and from knowledge of it: what lives there, when, how to pull it out and what to do with it while it still carries the cold. His Ribareva večera, the Fisherman’s Dinner, is a direct account of what the Adriatic yields, prepared by someone who was out in it before the kitchen opened.

• David Skoko’s Ribareva večera is a five-course sequence structured around a single logic: the fisherman knows what is worth eating and knows how to honour it. The menu draws from the daily catch out of Dugi Otok waters, shaped by season and by the discipline of working with what is already complete.

• Marenda is the mid-morning meal of the Dalmatian coast, eaten between breakfast and lunch, traditionally by fishermen returning from the early catch. It is a meal of function and precision: what came in that morning, prepared simply and eaten communally, close to the water. In the rhythm of Dalmatian life, marenda is a meal with clear purpose, shaped by what the sea offered before the day began in earnest.