Eating my way through Tbilisi

I have been enjoying immensely the restaurants in Tbilisi.  What I haven’t enjoyed is imagining how those delicious meals are being prepared.  You’ll see what I mean later.  Let me start by clarifying something:  earlier I wrote that the cheese bread, called kachapuri (pronounced “kotcha-pure-ee”) is like pizza.  It’s more like cheese toast.  Remember when you were a kid and you took a piece of cheese, laid it on a piece of bread and shoved it in the toaster oven?  (For those of you under 50, ask an elder about a toaster oven.  They used to be THE appliance to have in your kitchen.)  Well, that’s what cheese bread is like.  They also jazz it up as you can see in the first photo below.  It is ubiquitous here and is served at every meal in some configuration.  It is delicious, but if you ate it at every meal you’d quickly weigh half a ton, so I’ve tried to be judicious with it.

Meals here are off the “meat & potatoes” menu.  They eat a lot of meat, generally at every meal, usually with potatoes in some form or another, and bread.  Not cheese bread bread, but regular flat bread that is just wonderful.  I’ve made quite a few meals so far out of nothing but bread dipped in honey or Nutella.  (Yeah, I have a bit of a sweet tooth.)  But back on track – meats here come in a lot of forms.  My favorite so far is something called choslik, pronounced “shosh-lick.”  We know it as kebab.  If you order beef choslik you get cubes of meat that have been grilled on a skewer.  They are served with fried onions.  Interestingly, the chosliks aren’t cooked with vegetables on the skewer as we would do it.  The meat and vegetables are cooked separately and then combined on the serving plate.

If you order pork or veal choslik, it comes in ground form, looking like a long tube of meat into which the skewer is inserted.  It’s served wrapped in a tortilla-type bread, again covered with onions and pomegranate seeds.  I’ve seen chicken choslik on the menu, but I haven’t had that yet. 

Another favorite of mine is khinkali, pronounced “king-collie.”  Have you had steamed dumplings in a Chinese restaurant?  Khinkali are similar.  They’re dumplings stuffed with spiced meat and juice from the meat and either steamed or fried.  Picture a sack tied around the top.  That’s what a khinkali looks like.  You eat them by hand.  You pick up the dumpling by the knot at the top.  You hold it upside down and bite a small hole in the bottom.  Then you suck out the juice.  The mark of an experienced khinkali eater is how much juice you spill.  The goal, of course, is not to spill a drop of the juice.  If you spill the juice, the locals laugh at you and you get a wet chin.  You then eat the rest of the dumpling and meat inside.  Georgian tradition requires you to leave the knot on your plate.  It shows that you’re so wealthy you can afford to leave a portion on your plate.

Khinkali are served five or six to a serving, so they’re the perfect appetizer to share.  I say that but I’ve seen Georgians who can eat 20 or so by themselves.  While I do like khinkali, eating 20 at one sitting is not a goal of mine.

These delights are washed down with a choice of beverages.  My favorites are Natakhtani (“na-tock-tawney”), the local beer.  You can buy a half-liter in any restaurant or grocery store for about $2-3.  It’s a pilsner with a nice, clean taste and a foamy head.  It seems to go well with everything, especially after you’ve had two or three of them. 

I also like drinking Borjomi (“bore-shommy”), a sparkling mineral water.  You can really taste the minerals in the water, but it’s not an unpleasant taste.  At least I enjoy it, and it’s a good alternative when you don’t want beer (like at breakfast).  And, of course, Georgia is famous for its wines.  Almost every house has an arbor from which families make their own wine.  There are stores dedicated to nothing but wine, and the varieties are mind-boggling.  E.g., right now the featured wines in the stores are semi-dry and dry whites.  Apparently, different wines are featured at different times of the year.  I’m not a wine drinker so I can’t make any recommendations; I’ll leave that to my wife after she visits.

They have ethnic restaurants in Tbilisi as well.  We went to a Chinese place a couple of nights ago.  It was familiar food but the ordering is a bit different.  In the US, you order kung pao chicken, you get the chicken w/ vegetables, rice, and an egg roll or soup.  In Georgia, everything is á la carte.  For instance, if you order kung pao chicken that’s what you get – kung pao chicken.  No rice, no egg roll, no soup.  If you want those items, you have to order them separately.  They’re insanely cheap – a bowl of steamed rice was about 50 cents – but you have to remember to order them.

Now on to the more disturbing part of eating in Georgia.  Those of you who have weak stomachs or don’t know how sausage is made might want to stop reading here. 

OK, you asked for it.  I don’t think there’s an FDA in this country, and sanitation doesn’t seem to be at the forefront of any chef’s dinner plans.  Meat is often sold street-side from butcher shops populated by hairy, greasy men.  See the photos below for a typical street-side butcher shop.  We walked by this one early in the morning, when I took these pictures.  About four hours later, on a 50⁰F day, the same meat was sitting in the same bins. 

You don’t have to buy your meat from these shops.  You can also get them in your local grocery store.  You can buy it whole, as shown in the picture, or you can have the store prepare it for you, also shown in the picture.  The skin is nice and crisp, but there’s a garlic clove inserted every 3” in the meat, and I’m not a garlic fan, to say the least.

Buying fish is another story.  Fish are caught in the River Mtkvari (your pronunciation guess is good as mine here), the river that runs right through the heart of Tbilisi.  The water is green.  I don’t mean slightly green; I mean dyed-green-for-St.-Patrick’s-Day green.  It’s also filled with trash, industrial waste, and God knows what else.  Carp from this river is also sold at street-side stands where the fish are gutted and hung on a rope like clothesline until purchased, even if that’s a whole day.  Needless to say, I can’t recommend the fish. 

On the whole, though, I’ve really enjoyed eating and drinking my way through Tbilisi.  I still miss my personal favorites – Debbie’s chili w/ dumplings, a rack of ribs, and good ol’ American hot dogs – but I can’t complain so far.  Thank God the hotel has a gym. 

Thanks for reading and enjoy the pictures below.  See you again soon when I’ll be writing about the architecture of Tbilisi.