Gault&Millau Croatia 2023 will be published on April 18, and the exclusive dinner on the occasion of the promotion of the guide will be prepared by Ana Grgić Tomić - Croatian Chef of the Year and chef Paul Ivic chef of the Viennese restaurant Tian

Author: Emina Basara, Credits: Ingo Pertramer (Paul Ivic) and Matej Dokić for GM Croatia

The new Croatian edition of the renowned international gastronomic guide Gault&Millau will be presented on April 18 in the Emerald Hall of the Esplanade Hotel in Zagreb. The exclusive dinner on the occasion of the promotion of the 6th edition of this guide and the awarding of annual trophies to the best chefs and restaurants in Croatia is the most important event of the year for professionals from the world of gastronomy and oenology, business partners of the Gault&Millau community, and media and social network influencers. Due to the great interest of gastronomy lovers, for the first time since Gault&Millau has been published in Croatia, a limited number of tickets for the promotion and dinner will be available for sale. More details - soon.

Guests at the dinner will have the opportunity to enjoy the delicacies prepared by Esplanada's chef and last year's winner of the Gault&Millau trophy Chef of the Year, Ana Grgić Tomić, and she will be joined by the celebrated chef from Austria, Paul Ivić - master of vegetarian cuisine. His TIAN in Vienna is the first vegetarian restaurant in Austria to be awarded a Michelin star. The highlight of this Night of Culinary Oscars will be the awarding of annual trophies for the chef of the year, for the great chef of tomorrow, for the chef of traditional cuisine, for the young talents, for the pastry chef, for the best POP restaurant of the year, Trophy maitre d’hotel & service, and for the best restaurant. It will be a great opportunity to gather the top chefs from Croatia, to socialize and share experiences, and to enjoy food and wines in a relaxing atmosphere before the start of the new tourist season.

Ana Grgić Tomić has had an extremely successful business year in which she won the prestigious Gault&Millau Trophy Chef of the year and celebrated 10 years at the helm of Esplanada's kitchen, out of a total of 22 years of work at that favorite Zagreb hotel. Each dish designed by this first lady of Croatian gastronomy is awaited with great impatience and tasted with special pleasure, and it will be the same on April 18 when she will host her colleague from Austria, Paul Ivić.

"At our hotel, I had the opportunity to achieve numerous international collaborations, because foreign culinary stars often visit us. With them I exchange knowledge and experience. And I get along great with everyone. This is where organization is most important. Before arrival, the chef sends me his menu and a list of his needs, and me and my team do our best to great them with everything they asked for. When dinner starts, we are all as one team. I talk with them and taste their dishes, and I am especially happy that each guest chef is delighted with our way of working and how we welcome him into our kitchen" - said chef Ana Grgić Tomić.

Last year, she prepared an exclusive Gault&Millau dinner with the internationally awarded Swiss Chef of the Year, Stefan Heilemann. It will be a pleasure and a challenge for Ana to collaborate with her colleague Paul Ivić, one of the pioneers of haute vegetarian cuisine. Although born in the Austrian Tyrol, Ivić has Croatian roots, which he likes to emphasize, and he sincerely enjoys Croatian cuisine and its indigenous ingredients. The high level of cooking and the organization of chef Paul Ivić and his team last year during the summer months could also be seen by the guests of the Tian am Mer pop-up restaurant within the Falkensteiner Iadera hotel in Petrčani.

“For me, what we do is way beyond just minimizing it to vegetarian cooking. Food is more than just sustenance. Food is about taking responsibility for all the resources and all the hard working people behind them. Food is about connecting people because it doesn‘t need a specific language – all it needs is a loving soul” - this is how chef Ivić interprets food. Apart from the Viennese restaurant TIAN (Michelin* and four toques by Gault&Millau Austria), he spreads his culinary philosophy through another Viennese location – TIAN Bistro am Spittenberg. Until recently, he also did this through the TIAN restaurant in Munich, but after its sudden closure, chef Ivić and his team did not end their activities in Germany. They still sell products from the TIAN zuhause line there, and they run the winter pop-up restaurant TIAN Bistro am Berg within the Edelweiss Hotel in Zürs am Arlberg, in the German Alps.

“First of all, I have to say that I work with the best team that I could have wished for. They all follow my lead by never compromizing when it comes to the quality of food. And without their strength of purpose, the journey we made would not have been possible” - says chef Ivic.