Matthew McConaughey has given one small corner of Croatia a very famous endorsement. Appearing on Last Meals, the YouTube series from Mythical Kitchen where celebrities design the final meal they'd want to eat, the Hollywood actor picked a pasta he first tried on holiday in Istria — and it comes from Meneghetti, a wine and gastronomy estate near the town of Bale.
The dish in question is tonnarelli pasta served with Gambero Rosso prawns, coffee cream and brown butter. It's an unusual pairing: thick, fresh egg pasta and the sweet flesh of large red prawns, lifted by the roasted aroma of coffee and the nutty depth of butter cooked until it browns. Clearly it stuck with him — he ate it during a stay at Meneghetti and remembered it well enough to rank it alongside a last supper's worth of food.
Meneghetti itself is worth knowing about if you're heading to the Istrian peninsula. The restaurant sits on a historic estate wrapped in vineyards and olive groves, a short drive inland from Rovinj and the west coast. The kitchen works with seasonal ingredients and local producers, reworking classic Istrian cooking in a contemporary way — think truffles, olive oil and seafood, presented with fine-dining polish rather than rustic tavern simplicity.
For travellers, the episode is a useful nudge. Istria has quietly become one of the Mediterranean's most interesting food regions, and celebrity shout-outs like this tend to put specific restaurants on the map fast. If you want to try the tonnarelli yourself, it makes sense to book ahead, especially in summer when the coast fills up. The estate also functions as a wine destination, so a lunch can easily turn into an afternoon between the vines.
The broader takeaway is simple: some of the region's most memorable meals are found not in seaside hotspots but a few kilometres inland, where wine estates pair their own vintages with modern takes on Istrian classics. If it's good enough for a last meal, it's probably worth a detour on a Tuesday in July.
