When you visit the Republic of Georgia, bring your appetite. Georgia is beautiful and charming, but it is - perhaps above all - delicious.
Be ready for a steady rotation of cheese, bread, meat, and wine. The food is reason enough to spend a few extra days in Tbilisi or anywhere else in Georgia. Let's review the staples and a bit more:
Khachapuri
Georgian gastronomy begins with the khachapuri, which comes in several different varieties named for the regions from which they originate.
The iconic khachapuri adjaruli is the most photogenic one in the family - it's a cheese boat with an egg on top and butter in the corners. It's heavenly. The more melted and stretchy the cheese in the khachapuri adjaruli the better.
The simplest form of khachapuri is the khachapuri imeruli or imeretian khachapuri. This is Georgian bread stuffed with cheese; it's good for a quicker, lighter bite.
Our personal favorite actually isn't the adjaruli - it's the megrelian khachapuri. This one is Georgian bread filled and covered with cheese. It looks like a cheese-only pizza.
The last type we saw was the royal khachapuri, which is a megrelian with an extra piece of cheese on top of each slice. Although that sounds lovely, the extra cheese doesn't make any difference regarding flavor or texture. It just costs more than the megrelian.
Khinkali
Georgia's dumplings are another national treasure.
Khinkali kalakuri - what we understand to be the traditional dumplings - are dough sacks filled with meat and parsley. Usually a pork and beef mixture is used, or sometimes lamb is used in more rural areas. You'll also find other khinkali filled with Imeretian cheese, potatoes, or mushrooms. We practiced the art of eating khinkali while we had the chance.
You grab the dumpling by the doughy knob, house the meaty part, suck out the juice, and repeat. Delicious. At first, we ate the knobs, but some locals told us they don't eat the knobs. We started to notice plates covered in knobs once we heard this...and then we only ate the knobs sometimes - they are basically thick noodles, after all. We're only human!
The Many-Faced Bread
Georgians are very proud of their bread, and many of Georgia's traditional bites are wrought in pie form. Georgians are adept at filling dough with more than just cheese.
In fact, Georgians are also adept at filling their bread with nothing at all. Georgian bread on its own is tasty, filling, and fresh. We recommend finding a place that brings you basket after basket without you having to ask (or pay). A decent place will do this when you order bread-less dishes, which we'll discuss later.
The first non-cheese pie we enjoyed was the lobiani (L, below), a bean pie with spices and sometimes a bit of pork. This one is nice as a complement to something with cheese, sauce, or both.
Another pie we liked was the spinach pie, mkhlovani (C, below), which has a strong onion, garlic, and fennel presence. Being one who isn't crazy about fennel or anything licorice-flavored, I must say I still enjoyed mkhlovani. The ones we had struck a delicate balance among the strong flavors of the individual ingredients. I also like to think that the name mkhlovani inspired the name McLovin. A man can dream.
Our favorite Georgian pie was the meat pie, kubdari (R, above). Like the khinkali kalakuri, the kubdari is traditionally filled with a combination of minced pork and beef along with garlic and onions. This one also has a strong fennel presence, but the meat is so well done that it just doesn't matter - or, if you like fennel, it's probably wonderful. Give us a khachapuri, a kubdari, a bottle of red, and some cheesecake and game over - we're set for the night.
But wait - there's more! The delights of Georgian bread can be sweet as well as savory. We also enjoyed homemade cream-filled doughnuts and apple loaves.
The best sweetbreads we found were about a half-hour walk from Tbilisi's old town toward the Stalin Underground Printing House. This brick of apple-filled goodness was a revelation: It tasted like cinnamon apples sandwiched between flaky, buttery, crumbly Chex dough that somehow didn't fall apart. For those of you who know what I mean about the Chex - yeah, amazing, I know. In addition to being delicious, the apple loaf was so enormous and substantial that half of one was all both of us needed to eat on a day when we drove six hours and hiked four hours at the David Gareja monastery. The best part? One apple brick cost 0.70 gels - the equivalent of twenty-six US cents. $0.26. Welcome to Georgia - the best value in the world.
Other Meats & Sweets
We recommend ordering just about anything that involves sausage from any restaurant in Georgia. Our favorite meat dish, though, was a delicious tomato-based lamb dish called lamb chanakhi. In our chanakhi, the meat was stewed with eggplant, peppers, onions, garlic, and spices. It's a great change-up from cheese, and it pairs wonderfully with traditional Georgian bread.
The last meat dish we have to mention is manti, a distant cousin of khinkali consisting of a bowl of tiny meat pockets covered in garlic yogurt, butter, and paprika. The wonderful lady (an award-winning photographer) who ran the riverside Ada café in Mtskheta, where we had the manti, described it as a Turkish version of khinkali, and she enjoyed that I called it yogurt ravioli. It was great with coffee for breakfast and, with all that yogurt, great for the tummy, my digestively-challenged friends.
One final sweet: you'll see these long, bumpy strings hanging everywhere. They're churchkhela: walnuts covered in dried, condensed grape juice. You can also find them packaged in grocery stores. In truth, neither of us tried it. I'm allergic to walnuts, and Dani was afraid because she thought they look too much like candles. They're out there, though, if you're ready for a sweet, nutty adventure!
It would be a crime against Georgia - nay, a crime against humanity - to close with anything but wine. We had no idea how ubiquitous wine would be in Georgia - and how delicious! I assumed we would find decent beers and distilled spirits in a country that borders Russia, but in Georgia it's wine, wine, wine (and a bit of chacha, Georgia's moonshine) - and it's excellent. We were floored by the quality and affordability of Georgian wine. We also enjoyed that it was often served not in delicate, long-stemmed wine glasses but in thick, stout chalices.
We never saw Georgian wine before. Perhaps Georgia doesn't export wine. What we do know is that Georgian wine consumed locally is always fresh and dirt-cheap. It really gives Czech beer a run for best alcohol value on Earth, and it's on our short list for best wine on Earth with the main competition for our palette being Italy and Cyprus. It really is that good. We found our grape of choice to be the Saperavi. Often, house reds would be Saperavi. We also found the wine made exclusively for the David Gareja monstery was a Saperavi varietal.
As we began five minutes ago, it's cheese, bread, meat, and wine. Go to Georgia and enjoy.
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