Budva on the half shell

It’s a cold and sleeting night in New York and I keep asking myself, why am I here and not barefoot on one of Montenegro’s divine natural coves, facing west into the sun and the Adriatic’s riotous blue?

Why am I not in the little town of Pržno in walking distance to four small beaches and the fairytale-like Sveti Stefan? The stretch of Montenegrin coast South of the ancient city of Budva is known as the Budva Riviera. While it may not compare to its French counterpart in scale or chic-ness or mind-blowing bling, it is largely undiscovered by Americans and to my mind a far less pretentious and expensive terroir, but no less enjoyable.

The small towns of this region are locked in a perpetual movie-scape with the cerulean sea in front of them and the black mountains for which Montenegro is named jutting up from behind. But save for the smattering of large and homely casino hotels and the luxury yachts moored in their harbors, there is nothing in these towns that says, “look at me.” (Except perhaps for the Russians who have overtaken the region and don’t much suffer from modesty.)

Cat and Charlotte and I landed in Montenegro in September. It was the last leg of our Serbia-Croatia-Montenegro extravaganza and we were pooped. We rented a car at the Tivat airport and made our way south about 20 kilometers to Przno via Budva, a medieval walled city on the Adriatic.

We parked and made our way to the town center by passing through a ragtag flea market along the shore. It’s a slightly grim setup with an outdated/communist bent, but it’s where real Montenegrins and tourists collide, along with Nutella crepes, bad CDs and cheap-ass clothing. It’s also where I saw a little Roma girl nearly get run over by an angry local.

Our lunch in Budva was a little ways from the walled city past the marina at a spot called Jadran. We sat a few feet from the narrow beach and ate a sublime meal, only half of which could be attributed to the food. The breezy Adriatic, the goofy waiter, the feeling of being so far away in such an unfamiliar but utterly pleasant spot – all of that constituted the other half.

We ate a salad, a ton of yeasty bread and a heaping bowl of grilled shellfish, including clams, two kinds of mussels, langoustines and the only shrimp I’ve ever seen with roe in it. If I found out that those fresh, salty and garlicky mollusks were to be my last supper, I would have been deeply satisfied.

I’ll get to Pržno proper in my next post.