The supra table in theory and in practice, the khinkali at midnight, the wine bars that made Georgian natural wine internationally known, and the specific dishes that make Tbilisi the most underrated food city in Europe.
The Supra in Practice
The supra (the Georgian feast table) in a restaurant requires: the tamada (if the restaurant doesn’t assign one, the most senior guest at the table traditionally assumes the role), the wine (the qvevri wines of Kakheti, the chacha — the Georgian grappa — for toasts that require something stronger than wine), and the specific sequence of food that arrives before the main courses.
The cold mezze:
- Pkhali: the vegetable balls (spinach, beet, or green bean) ground with walnut paste, garlic, and Georgian spices, formed into small rounds and garnished with a pomegranate seed. The walnut paste (the specific character of the walnut-fenugreek-garlic combination) is the foundation of Georgian cold cuisine.
- Badrijani nigvzit: the aubergine rolls filled with the same walnut paste, served cold at room temperature. The combination of the bitter aubergine and the rich walnut paste is the definitive Georgian vegetable dish.
- Lobiani: the bean-filled bread (the Georgian flat bread, the beans slow-cooked with onion and bacon, the bread sealed around the filling and baked or fried) — the most satisfying of the Georgian bread traditions.
The hot khinkali:
The Georgian dumpling — the large, pleated pouch of pasta (much larger than a Chinese jiaozi, the pleating the indicator of the maker’s skill — 28 pleats is the standard, more indicates mastery) filled with spiced meat in a rich broth. The correct eating technique: hold the topknot, bite a small hole in the side, drink the broth before eating the rest, do not eat the topknot (it exists for holding). The pile of eaten topknots at the end of a Georgian meal is the measure of consumption.
Where:
Barbarestan (Davit Aghmashenebeli Avenue, 132): the most celebrated Georgian restaurant in Tbilisi, the menu reconstructed from a 19th-century Georgian cookbook, the dishes that most restaurants have abandoned returned to their original character. The walnut sauce preparations, the pheasant soup, the specific archival quality of the cooking. Book ahead. 60-100 GEL / £15.96-26.59 per person.
Shavi Lomi (Akhvlediani Street, 8): the neighbourhood restaurant that the Tbilisi professional class uses for the mid-week supra — the food excellent, the atmosphere unpretentious, the wine list one of the finest in the city. 40-65 GEL / £10.64-17.29 per person.
The Khinkali counter restaurants of Didube: The Didube bus station area in northwestern Tbilisi has the finest street-level khinkali counters in the city — the places that exist for the overnight bus passengers and the local workers, not for tourists. The khinkali here: 1.50-2.50 GEL / £0.40-0.67 each, 8-10 per person.
The Wine Bars
Vino Underground (Gia Tabidze Street, 1):
The wine bar that introduced Georgian natural wine to the international food press — the founder Giorgi Dakishvili was the first to present qvevri wines to London, Paris, and New York importers in the early 2010s. The cellar of 300+ Georgian wines, all from small producers, the menu changing seasonally with the vinifications. Wine by the glass: 12-30 GEL / £3.19-7.98.
The specific order: one Rkatsiteli (the amber qvevri white — ask for a 6-month skin contact version), one Saperavi (a Telavi region example for comparison with a Kakheti version), and the charcuterie plate (the dried meats and the pkhali).
G.Vino (Nikoloz Baratha Square, 2):
The second-generation Tbilisi wine bar, the focus on the experimental producers — the pét-nat (the pétillant naturel, the sparkling wine made by ancestral method), the co-ferments (the multi-grape or multi-species fermentations), and the natural wine producers who don’t appear on the Vino Underground list.
The Breakfast
The specific Tbilisi breakfast that most hotel breakfasts don’t approximate:
Shotis puri (the traditional Georgian bread) from the Puri Guliani bakery (Shavteli Street): the long oval bread baked in the tone oven (the clay oven set in the floor), the bottom slightly charred where it touched the oven wall. Fresh at 7am.
Matsoni (the Georgian fermented milk) from the Dezerter Bazaar market with the wildflower honey from the mountain hives: 5-12 GEL / £1.33-3.19 for the combination.
Churchkhela from the market: the walnuts in dried grape must, the traditional Georgian sweet that combines protein and natural sugar in the form of a candle-shaped confection.
The Specific Tbilisi Instruction
The Dezerter Bazaar at 8am:
The main market of Tbilisi — the traders laying out the day’s produce from 6am, the wholesale transactions complete by 8am, the retail market beginning. The specific Dezerter Bazaar experience at 8am: the cheese vendors, the spice sellers, the churchkhela hung from every stall, the tkemali (the sour plum sauce, the Georgian condiment for grilled meats) in its summer green version and its autumn red version, and the specific Caucasian vegetable vocabulary (the jonjoli — the pickled bladdernut blossom, the most specific Georgian pickle; the khmeli suneli — the Georgian spice blend of fenugreek, coriander seed, and summer savory).
