Zadar Local Products
Local Food and Drink to Take Home
Four things from this region are worth luggage space, and all of them can be bought from the people who make them. Maraschino, the cherry liqueur Zadar has distilled for roughly five hundred years, comes from the distiller's own shop rather than a souvenir shelf. Pag sheep cheese, hard and salty from an island grazed on herbs and salt spray, is sold by the dairy that wins the medals for it, at several ages that taste noticeably different.
The others are olive oil from the Ravni Kotari fields inland and salt still harvested by hand at the Nin pans. The open market under the walls carries all of it alongside fruit, vegetables, honey and rakija, and a walk through it is the fastest education in what this coast actually eats. Mornings only, cash preferred.