A small, perpetually-booked room on Vlaška, Mali Bar belongs to the well-known Zagreb chef Ana Ugarković and her partner. The menu is short, changes often, and runs to small plates designed to share — tuna tartare with capers, slow-cooked beef cheek, gnocchi with truffle. Croatian ingredients, technique that draws on Italian and Spanish small-plate traditions.
The room holds about thirty people in two rows of tables; the kitchen is open behind the bar. Reservations open online, often a week or more ahead, and disappear fast. Wine is mostly Croatian, well chosen, fairly priced.