We hope that you will have a lovely time with us

Our concept…

Dalmatia is rich in spices and herbs such as salt, basil, sage, thyme, mint, rosemary, fennel, bay leaf, chives, and many others, but also in various vegetables and fruits that are so tasty that sometimes is enough to slice a tomato, add a drop of homemade olive oil, throw a grain of salt and enjoy as a complete meal.

We at The Botanist try to create all dishes with the character of Dalmatia, and at the same time show how vegan food can also be prepared at the highest gastronomic level. Today, we are a restaurant with over 4,000 real reviews and a rating of 4.9, which places us at the very top of the restaurant offer in the city of Zadar, but also beyond. Of course, there are also negative reviews, which are a completely legitimate personal experience of each guest, which push us to be even better, and to continue to develop and learn.

Also, it is very important for us to have a network of local family farms, including our own, from which we source organic produce. We source locally as much as possible. In the same way, we make our own stocks, soups, sauces, spreads, and pesto, and we are in the process of approaching the concept of zero waste food preparation, thus encouraging awareness and care for the environment.

Of course, we still have a lot of work to do, but we invest in improving our restaurant every day. We want to be sustainable and to present our food to our fellow citizens and foreign guests through a reflection of sustainable, sensitive and quality Dalmatia. We also cooperate with many city associations such as Latica & Zadar Dog Shelter.

Our story…

In order to present the restaurant in the best light, we will tell you the story of how we came up with the idea and realization of opening our restaurant The Botanist

We are four brothers who were born and raised in our native Petrčane, 12 kilometers away from Zadar. We grew up in a poor family, and our childhood in post-war Croatia was difficult from the current perspective, but despite the difficult times, we were the happiest children in the world. Although we were poor, we grew up with a lot of fun, games, and the love of our caring parents who planted in us all the values of life, honesty, modesty, fighting spirit and hard work that should be inherited throughout life. Of course, love for one’s neighbour and that biblical saying, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", prevailed above all.

Our mother, who had a leading role in the family with her tireless desire to give us the best possible life, and our father as a moral vertical and role model, taught us how to hold true values in life. We were taught that material things are not so important, but more important are life attitudes and hard work through which we will acquire daily blessings.

Roko, as the oldest of four brothers, graduated from high school in Pučišća on the island of Brač, majoring in stonemasonry tehnician, and through his education he learned fine calculation of angles, precision in stone processing techniques (which later developed into fine woodworking techniques), and all these skills taught him to be disciplined in his work.

Duje graduated from a cooking school, and even as a child he had a strong affinity for gastronomy as can be seen from his enjoyment in creating dishes.

Vice moved very soon after school to distant European countries in search of a life that better suited his affinities for a more peaceful and cultural life, in well-organized environments.

Lujo, the youngest brother studied Art history to satisfy his desire to understand “creation” in art, which he later translated into culinary creativity.

We Dalmatians perceive growing up in Dalmatia through tourism and hospitality industry, because those are the most indigneous offers of our area. As the old saying of our dear local, Enio Meštrović says, “the most successful people are those with an empty refrigerator in childhood“. So after working for a couple of after-school seasons for other employers, we came up with many ways to start our own business, and finally in 2012 we encouraged ourselves with our hands and borrowed money to build ‘Beach House Fratelli“ which still operates today on the main beach in Petrčane. After that, we tried other business ventures, some really successful, and some less, but all this gave us motivation to realize our dreams and not to be discouraged along the way.

Parallel with our businesses, we also developed our musical talents. Duje participated and made it to the finals of the popular show ‘Croatia’s Got Talent’. Together with Lujo, he left valuable and notable roles in “Klapa Kožino“ which won all the awards that could be won in traditional acapella singing. (*Klapa is a group of five to eight singers who sing acapella, without a conductor and musical instruments. It consists of a first tenor, a second tenor and a bass (themes about klapa songs are sea, wine, love and family). Klapa promotes the traditional way of singing specific to Dalmatia and In 2012 klapa was inscribed in UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

One summer we were all together at the birth house when Vice broke the news that he had become a vegan. Even though our father was declared a freak in small community of Petrčane in the nineties, after he read in a doctoral dissertation that red meat is not the healthiest, especially in large quantities, we still teased Vice and outsmarted him for days, claiming that it was just one of the fashionable nonsense he fell for.

However, even though we are a family that loves endless debates and conflicts, no matter how much we tried to argue the point of eating meat, Vice was the winner. In the moral, health, economical, ethical, ecological sense, his arguments were unbeatable. We continued to attack him, but as the legend says, “our blades became dull, and our arms and legs faltered“ in front of Vice’s convincing arguments, so we had nothing left but to watch a few documentaries recommended by our brother.

Considering the formula emotional intelligence + information = activism, we quickly realized that there is no love in the meat industry and that many things aren’t good. We no longer wanted to be part of that, and gradually over the years we came to the stage of thinking about opening our own vegan restaurant.

Our guiding thread was to create a restaurant worth of every guest, not just vegans and vegetarians. When we went to regular restaurants, in 99 % of the cases we were disappointed with the veggie offer and it would always come down to dead grilled vegetables and pale and tasteless vegetable risotto. However, when we went to vegan restaurants, their offer was always limited to wraps, bowls, burgers and generally fast food that never fully satisfied us, and we always felt like second-class citizens.

We grew up with grandparents who were real gourmets, and we are convinced that if they had lived in different times, they would certainly have their own restaurants that would be known all over the world. They paid a lot of attention to the flavors, and they always said that “well-cooked pasta without any sauce is better than any ok-prepared steak in the world“. Also, our grandma and grandpa’s diet mostly consisted of vegetarian food, and only a couple of times a month there was meat or fish on the menu. Today, we remember the taste of our grandma’s “dry pasta“ (*pasta with tomato sauce) which we are trying to reproduce today, but we are convinced that we are not even close to it.

They cooked with focus and would tirelessly taste a dish thirty times before removing it from the heat, looking for exactly what they wanted from each food item, and they would get it by additional cooking, cooling and seasoning. They were dedicated to achieving perfect flavor, the most important factor in cooking, and would fight if something fell below the high standards they set. In the same way, love would blossom if the lunch was tasty and had the right texture.

“All modern methods like confit, sous vide methods, and slow cooking methods were practiced every day, so the chickpeas stew would be cooked for 8 hours!”

Grandma would get up early and prepare all the ingredients, she would put the onion in olive oil and stew it on the lowest heat until it was cooked. Then she would add all the other dry and wet ingredients and let it simmer until she got back from Sunday mass. When she came back and checked the flavors, she would finish the slow cooking process, and a delicious lunch would be served. We can only say the best about the perfection of her dishes, and we remember them with great nostalgia.

Our grandparents gave us the path that we are walking today, and we don’t want to give up under any circumstances. We want to present the Mediterranean and Dalmatia in the best light and show you what we can do in terms of combining top flavors at the plate. Our understanding of ingredients is that if they are fresh and tasty, then the dish composed from it will also be delicious

Thank you for reading our story. We hope you recognize our vision for this special gastronomic experience, feel comfortable in The Botanist oasis of gastronomic pleasure and enjoy our food