The 6th TSW Festival: Zadar is Turning Into a City of Gastronomy Fish Delights

This 6th Tuna, Sushi & Wine Festival is the first public and open event after the corona crisis and the measures that followed. It is organized by the Zadar Tourist Office. Due to the mentioned reasons, the Festival was “pending” for more than two years, and the date of the festival has been moved from April to May whereby the concept of the 6th TSW will be somewhat different than the earlier five festivals. 

The festival was launched in 2015 at the initiative of the Japanese Embassy in Croatia and the Society of Japanese-Croatian Friendship with the idea of strengthening the economic and cultural exchange between Japan and Croatia, and Osaka and Zadar. Zadar was not chosen by chance as the host of such a manifestation. One of the most important economic activities of the Zadar region is fishing and the fish processing industry. More than half of the Croatian fleet for fishing blue fish is located in this region, as well as three of the four fish farms of the exceptional bluefin tuna.  Zadar is a city of fish, a city of blue fish, tuna, sardines and mackerel and thus tuna became the media for the rapprochement of Japan and Croatia.

The Tuna, Sushi & Wine Festival was well conceived: Japanese chefs would fly over from Japan and they would not only teach our chefs on how to prepare their fish dishes but they were also the main stars at real small folk feasts. They were accompanied by Japanese artists and Japanese journalists who would write about Croatia, Zadar and this interesting festival for their media at home. Just as Adriatic tuna entered the Japanese market, so through this Festival, Japanese gastronomy came closer to Croatia and Zadar. Famous sushi chefs from Japan, but also from California, were Zadar guests and due to the tuna, the fishing locality of Kali near Zadar was personally visited by  the famous Nobu Matsuhisa. Various other cultural and entertainment events were part of the Festival, which was first held in February, then in April, and then the corona crisis froze it for two years.

This year's Festival with its changed appearance will be a kind of bridge to the comeback of the familiar glow and program for which the Zadar Tuna, Sushi & Wine Festival acquired many acknowledgements in the past years, among which the one from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Regardless of the aforesaid, the 6th Tuna, Sushi & Wine Festival will be rich, first of all, with events and offers as well as exhibitions and evening music programs during the last two days of the Festival, on Friday and Saturday. All the events will take place in a large tent on Petar Zoranić Square where the cooking show program of well-known Zadar chefs and restaurants are to take place. In the morning gastronomy programs from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Zadar will be presented as a city of fish, and only fish dishes will be prepared in the traditional and contemporary manner, inventive dishes, and, of course, the traditional Japanese sushi rolls. Each day a different Zadar restaurant will be preparing dishes, and established Zadar chefs will show their cooking skills.  The star of the Friday evening cooking show will be the Kali Fishing Evenings Association from “the most fishing locality in the entire Adriatic” offering their famous traditional Kali brodetto, and Đani Stipaničev will be performing at the evening concert. The Saturday evening grill show will be led by the Youth Association from the Zadar district of  Puntamika with a concert by the Detour Group.

During the six days, Petar Zoranić Square will become a Gastro Market with stalls from several family farms and the Nin Salt Works and Pag Cheese Factory. Every day there will be music on the square with famous Zadar DJs as well as photograph exhibitions of the late Zadar artist Joso Špraljo and his grandson Jean Marca Saldini entitled „Tuna“ and that of Danijel Kolega entitled „Equilibrium“ in Cedulin Palace atrium.

All the prepared dishes will be consumed with a voucher of 25 kuna, and drinks – wine from the Zadar vintners Degarra, Fiolić and Royal Vineyards and Ožujsko beer at 10 kn. the entire income of the Festival is intended for the Zadar Hotel, Tourism and Hospitality School whose students and teachers will actively participate at the Festival and also for the Oncology Department of Zadar General Hospital through the Zadar Cancer League.