There’s a particular satisfaction in eating pasta that was made by hand the same morning, in a kitchen that has been making it the same way for generations. In Istria, that pasta is most likely to be fuži or pljukanci — two distinctly local shapes that bear only a passing resemblance to anything you’d find on a supermarket shelf, and which carry with them the full weight of the region’s culinary identity.

Neither shape is complicated. Neither requires special equipment. Both demand good eggs, good flour, and hands that know what they’re doing. The results, when the pasta is fresh and the sauce is right, are among the best things you’ll eat in Istria.

Fuži: The Quill That Conquered Istria

Fuži (pronounced “FOO-zhee”) is the more famous of the two shapes — the one that appears on restaurant menus across the peninsula and that most visitors will encounter first. The shape is essentially a small tube, formed by cutting egg pasta dough into squares and rolling each square diagonally around a thin stick or skewer to create a hollow quill. The ends are pinched or left open depending on the maker, and the ridged texture that results from the rolling grips sauce in a way that smooth pasta simply can’t.

Making fuži is time-consuming work. The dough — typically made with type 00 flour and local free-range eggs, which have a deep yellow yolk that colours the pasta golden — must be rolled thin enough to be delicate but thick enough to hold its shape during cooking. Each piece is then individually formed. A skilled pasta maker can produce several hundred fuži in an hour, but the work is meditative rather than fast.

The result is a pasta with personality: slightly chewy, with a pleasant resistance that disappears only at the very end of each bite. It holds sauce inside the hollow tube and catches it on the ridged exterior simultaneously. It was designed, whether intentionally or not, to be the ideal vehicle for the rich, slow-cooked sauces of the Istrian kitchen.

The Classic Fuži Sauces

Fuži s Tartufima — With Truffles

The most celebrated pairing in Istrian cooking. Fresh fuži tossed with a sauce of butter, a little cream, and freshly shaved or grated truffle — either white in autumn or black year-round — is a dish of extraordinary simplicity and depth. The pasta’s egg richness amplifies the truffle’s earthiness; the fat in the butter and cream carries the aroma; the hollow tubes trap little pockets of sauce with every bite. It is, by most reasonable measures, one of the great pasta dishes in Europe.

During white truffle season (September through January, peaking in October and November), this dish appears on virtually every menu in Istria. Outside of season, the black truffle version is a perfectly worthy substitute. Truffle paste sauces are available year-round but lack the volatile aromatic compounds that make fresh truffle genuinely extraordinary — they’re good, but they’re not the same thing.

Fuži s Škampima — With Scampi

The coastal counterpart to the truffle version: fuži with Adriatic scampi, cooked in white wine, garlic, olive oil, and a little tomato or finished without tomato for a purer shellfish flavour. The scampi release their juices into the pasta cooking water, the sauce is built in the pan, and the fuži are tossed in at the last moment to absorb everything. The result should be glossy, savoury, and redolent of the sea.

Some kitchens combine scampi and truffles in a single sauce — a combination that sounds excessive but works beautifully, the brine of the shellfish offsetting the earthiness of the truffle in the same way that sea salt offsets dark chocolate.

Fuži sa Divljačinom — With Game

In the inland villages, the traditional pairing is with wild game — a slow-cooked ragù of wild boar, venison, or hare that has been braised for hours with red wine, bay leaves, and root vegetables until it falls apart into a deeply savoury sauce. This is the winter version of fuži, the one that makes sense when the temperature drops and the Bora wind is coming off the mountains. It’s hearty food, built for the climate.

Pljukanci: The Rustier Sibling

If fuži is the polished, restaurant-ready pasta shape, pljukanci (pronounced roughly “plee-YOO-kahn-tsee”) is its rougher, more rustic counterpart. The shape is a hand-rolled rope — a small piece of dough rolled between the palms or against the work surface into an irregular cylinder, tapered at both ends, with a slightly uneven texture that’s entirely the point. No two pljukanci are identical. The irregularity is not a flaw.

Pljukanci are made with a slightly different dough than fuži — traditionally with less egg, sometimes with a proportion of whole wheat flour, which gives them a nuttier flavour and a more robust texture. They cook more slowly than fuži and hold their shape more assertively, making them better suited to chunky, hearty sauces that would overwhelm a more delicate pasta.

You’re more likely to find pljukanci in inland konobas and agrotourism restaurants than on coastal tourist menus, which makes them something of a reward for the traveller willing to leave the waterfront and explore the interior.

The Classic Pljukanci Sauces

With Mushrooms and Sausage

The most traditional pairing: dried or fresh wild mushrooms (porcini are common, chanterelles in season) cooked down with local sausage, garlic, and white wine into a chunky sauce that’s almost more of a braise than a pasta sauce. The pljukanci’s irregular surface catches every piece of mushroom and every drop of the porky, earthy cooking liquid. It’s autumn in a bowl.

With Vegetables and Cheese

The vegetarian version, typically made with seasonal vegetables — zucchini and cherry tomatoes in summer, roasted peppers in early autumn — finished with a generous grating of local sheep’s cheese (ovčji sir). The cheese melts into the sauce and adds a saltiness that ties the vegetables together. Simpler than the meat versions, but when the vegetables are at their seasonal peak, genuinely excellent.

With Goulash

An Austro-Hungarian legacy that appears in the northern parts of Istria: pljukanci served alongside or tossed with a slow-cooked beef or veal goulash, paprika-rich and substantial. It’s a combination that reflects Istria’s position at the crossroads of Italian, Croatian, and Central European culinary traditions, and it’s a reminder that the peninsula’s food history is more complicated — and more interesting — than simple Mediterranean cuisine.

The Dough: What Makes Istrian Pasta Different

Istrian egg pasta is made with a higher ratio of egg yolk to whole egg than most Italian regional traditions, reflecting both the richness of local free-range eggs and a preference for a deeply golden, flavourful dough. The eggs from Istrian farmyards are noticeably different from supermarket eggs — the yolks are almost orange, the flavour pronounced, and the pasta they produce has a richness that factory pasta simply cannot replicate.

The flour used is typically a soft wheat type 00, finely milled and with a low gluten content that produces a supple, rollable dough. Some older recipes use a proportion of cornmeal or whole wheat, particularly for pljukanci, which gives a slightly coarser texture and a more complex flavour.

The dough is always rested before shaping — a minimum of 30 minutes wrapped in cloth, traditionally longer — which relaxes the gluten and makes rolling and shaping significantly easier. This is not a step to skip.

Where to Eat the Best Handmade Pasta in Istria

The honest answer is that the best fuži and pljukanci in Istria are made in private homes and served to family at Sunday lunch. The second-best option is a traditional konoba or agrotourism restaurant where the pasta is made fresh each morning and the sauces are built from scratch.

A few principles for finding genuinely good handmade pasta:

• Ask if the pasta is homemade (domaća tjestenina). At places that make it themselves, the answer comes quickly and with some pride. At places serving dried or bought pasta, the answer is evasive.
• Look for inland konobas in hilltop villages. Motovun, Grožnjan, Oprtalj, Buzet — the traditional pasta culture is stronger in the interior than on the coast, where tourist demand has pushed many restaurants toward easier, more predictable food.
• Agrotourism restaurants that serve fixed menus are almost always making their own pasta. The fixed menu format means they’re cooking what they made that morning, not spinning up pasta to order from a dried packet.
• Truffle season is the best time. From September through November, the combination of fresh fuži and freshly hunted truffle is at its peak, and restaurants across Istria are cooking this pairing with the full attention it deserves.

Making Fuži at Home

If you want to try making fuži at home after your trip, the process is straightforward if time-consuming. Make a dough with 100g type 00 flour per egg yolk (plus one whole egg per 200g flour), knead until smooth, rest for an hour. Roll thin — around 2mm — and cut into 4-5cm squares. Place each square with one corner pointing toward you, put a thin skewer or chopstick diagonally across the middle, and roll the bottom corner up over the skewer, pressing to seal. Slide off the skewer. The result should be a small, ridged hollow tube. Cook in well-salted boiling water for 3-4 minutes if fresh.

The first batch will be imperfect. The second will be better. By the third, you’ll understand why Istrian grandmothers have such good hands.

Fuži and pljukanci are just two chapters in Istria’s rich food story. Discover more in our Istria Food & Wine Guide, or read about the maneštra and seafood that complete the traditional Istrian table.