You know, pizza in Croatia is a very interesting thing. I mean these guys put eggs on pizzas. 1 egg, over easy, dead center on your pizza. Pepperoni? They wonder what the hell that is. Ham, Croatia has better ham than 90% of any pizza shops in the US that I have ever had the fortune to have ordered from. Want 200 lbs of cheese and toppings; might want to stay in the US and fork over the fee for double/triple toppings.
Another interesting tidbit is that there is no build your own style pizza like in the US. No pick 2, 3, 20 toppings for $xx.99. It’s unheard of here. But then again, almost every shop has the exact same names for their pizzas, but they are totally different in tastes. Order from one pizzeria and the get the same thing from a different one, and you will notice the subtle differences.
Restaurant Madera Zapresic – Delicious and Finger-lickin’ Good Pizza
Well, over the weekend, with my very pregnant wife not in the mood to cook, and me kinda sorta recuperating from a hectic work week and not really in the mood either; we conspired to see about ordering a pizza. Off to Facebook Ana goes to peruse the local shops and see if there is an online menu and what the prices are like. She finds Restaurant Madera, and it so happens that it is literally a 5 minute walk up the street from us. So how do we do this because we want to surprise the kids? We can’t just up and call them and place an order, kids do understand speech. Walking out into the hallway of the building and then calling them; a knock at the door would be revealing and it would be quite strange to make that call. Facebook messaging to the rescue.
I send them a message in English (because they prominently display English on their page), and I had my wife follow it up in Croatian to be understood, or the person on the other end might find it funny… I wanted to know if we could place an order online and just go pick it up; it’s a done deal in the US, but sometimes Croatian people can be rather funny about things like this. We waited maybe 10 minutes before we said to Hades with waiting on a reply, and we decided to just go there and ask in person.
We get there and place an order (we had a brain fart guys) when my phone goes off alerting me that I had a Facebook message. The reply was that we could do that, or call and have it delivered, go and have it delivered; which ever we decided. Not to mention that it was in English. Well, the nice lady at the counter said that it wouldn’t be long, like 5 minutes before it would be ready (we had just ordered it to boot!), and we said that we would be back because we were going to run up to the ‘corner’ store for something.
We spend the 5 minutes walking to the store, grabbing a bottle of soda and walking back to the pizzeria; when it dawns on me to find out what size pizza we ordered. This family can put away a jumbo in a sitting and be well off, if we inadvertently nabbed ourselves something smaller… we would need to get a second one. And here’s the brain fart; the lady at the counter didn’t ask and we didn’t say, so it was assumed to be a smaller size than the jumbo. Ordered a second one, paid for both, had a seat and I chatted with who ever was on the other end of the computer for this place’s Facebook page.
Another 5 minutes later, I am carrying 2 normal pizzas out into the freezing weather walking home. When we walked through the door you could have sworn that we had just won the kiddy lottery because the kids went ballisticly happy when spying the 2 white boxes that could only be carrying pizzas. Mind you guys, pizza before the move was a once a year thing.
Kids were eager to get the table set and my laptop centered for pizza and Pitch Perfect. Mateo devoured his portion, mommy had to loosen her robe belt, daddy ate everything that wasn’t taken or nailed down. Lesley, played with hers. I do think she will be like my sisters and I as children; a strict cheese only pizza eater. She opted for some bread and jam instead and we enjoyed the family time.
The pizza itself was great. I have to mention that this is the first pizza we came across that had stuffed crust. Nothing was burnt, or under cooked. A little cold (from being out in the weather, that’s our fault), but fantastic. If you ever find yourself in the Zapresic area of Croatia, I wholeheartedly recommend visiting Restaurant Madera. We are even planning a return trip to try out some of their house specialties. Aside from various types of pizza, they also offer a wide variety of grill and barbecue dishes which look extremely appetizing. Just take a look at their Facebook page! That alone is enough to make you drool! Customer service was very friendly and an added bonus is that you can even order online.
Remember folks, there’s no such thing as a strict pizza only shop here in Croatia. So from the Our Blended Marriage family to Restaurant Madera, you guys got the 6 thumbs up and jam sandwich seal of approval! Hope to see you guys again soon!