Georgian Food and Drink: Khachapuri, Khinkali, Wine and the Supra

Khachapuri Megruli, with cheese inside and on top. (Photo: Schalwa at German Wikipedia, Public domain)

Georgian food is famously varied. Alongside its celebrated meat dishes there is a whole repertoire of vegetarian and even vegan cooking, thanks partly to the Orthodox Church's many fasting days, when the devout give up meat, milk and eggs. In Soviet times Georgian cooking was the Union's haute cuisine, and its dishes spread through the other republics and Eastern Europe. Eating can be a ceremony in itself, and a traditional feast, the supra, is one of the great experiences for a visitor. The country is also known for its mineral waters and its wine, and calls itself the cradle of winemaking.

Bread

White bread rules. The traditional loaf is tonis puri, a flatbread slapped onto the hot inner wall of a round stone oven, the tone, and lifted out a few minutes later with a long hook (which leaves the little hole in the middle). It is eaten hot or cold and turns up at nearly every meal. Shotis puri, mostly in Kakheti, is the same bread in a longer shape. Look out too for mchadi, a cornbread often eaten with beans, and ghvezeli, a stuffed pastry sold in markets and by the roadside.

Tonis puri from a traditional stone oven. (Photo: თეკა at Georgian Wikipedia, Public domain)

Khachapuri: the national cheese bread

If Georgia has one national dish it is khachapuri, cheese-filled bread, eaten as a street snack, a starter or a meal in itself. In a restaurant it is usually the size of a pizza and meant to be shared by two to four people: ordering one each is the classic tourist mistake. Georgians even track a khachapuri index of what its ingredients cost around the country. The main kinds:

• Imeruli, the standard round one filled with Imeretian cheese;
• Megruli, from Mingrelia, with cheese inside and on top;
• Adjaruli, from Adjara, shaped like a boat, filled with cheese and an egg, with butter added straight from the wood oven; stir it all together before you eat, and try not to spill;
• Penovani, made with flaky pastry, a common street snack;
• regional versions filled with cheese and potato (Osiuri), with ham or bacon (Rachuli), or roasted on a skewer over the fire (Shampurze).

Lobiani, from Racha, is the same idea filled with spiced beans instead of cheese: a vegan alternative, especially popular on fast days.

Lobiani, the bean-filled cousin of khachapuri. (Photo: Sandra C from Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Cheese and dairy

Much of Georgia's milk goes into cheese, mostly made by small farmers. Sulguni is a brined cheese much like block mozzarella, also sold smoked or braided; Imeruli is similar but more crumbly; Meskhuri is so rich it is almost butter. Two are recognised by UNESCO: dambalkhacho, a mould-ripened cheese from the north-east made since at least the 17th century, and tenili, strands of sheep's-milk cheese pressed into a clay pot. Matsoni is a thick, rich yoghurt. Farmers' cheese is easy to buy in villages and markets, but unpasteurised dairy may not agree with every stomach.

Khinkali

The other iconic dish is khinkali, big twisted dumplings of spiced minced meat (beef and/or pork, with onion, garlic and herbs), boiled and served with black pepper. They are eaten by hand, and doing it properly impresses the locals: hold the knot on top, and with the first bite suck out the hot juice so it does not spill (first-timers usually do). Then eat the rest; most Georgians leave the knot on the plate. A fork is acceptable, but cutting one up is not. Town khinkali have a thicker knot and milder filling; mountain khinkali, found in rural eateries, are thinner and more heavily spiced. Versions filled with cheese or potato exist too. Khinkali are ordered by the piece, about 5 to 7 per person, made to order, and go with beer or vodka rather than wine.

Khinkali, eaten by hand. (Photo: David shaya, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Mtsvadi and other meat dishes

Mtsvadi, better known by its Russian name shashlik, is Georgia's favourite barbecue: palm-sized pieces of pork, veal, chicken or lamb marinated in onion, wine and often pomegranate, skewered and roasted over embers, ideally of dried vine cuttings. Other classics: satsivi (chicken in walnut sauce), shkmeruli (chicken in a garlic and milk sauce), kupati (spicy sausage), chakhokhbili (chicken stewed with tomatoes and herbs), chakapuli (lamb or veal with tarragon, sour plums and white wine), chanakhi (a lamb, tomato, aubergine and potato stew) and ojakhuri (meat with fried potatoes).

Chanakhi, a lamb and vegetable stew. (Photo: Miansari66, CC0)

Vegetables, walnuts and sauces

Vegetarian dishes, many from western Georgia, fill every feast table:

• Lobio, beans stewed with coriander, walnuts, garlic and onion;
• Nigvziani badrijani, fried aubergine rolled around a garlicky walnut paste, often with pomegranate seeds;
• Pkhali, minced spinach, beetroot, cabbage or beans mixed with ground walnuts, herbs and vinegar;
• Ajapsandali, a vegetable stew along the lines of ratatouille;
• Ghomi, a cornmeal porridge often served with melted cheese, and chvishtari, its baked cousin;
• Jonjoli, pickled bladdernut buds that taste somewhere between olives and capers;
• a tomato and cucumber salad with walnut dressing, on nearly every menu.

The key sauces are tkemali (sour plum) and pomegranate, and the spice mix to take home is Svanetian salt, with garlic, fenugreek, dill, coriander, caraway, paprika and marigold.

Lobio, stewed beans. (Photo: Georgian Recipes at Georgia About, CC BY 3.0)

Sweets and fruit

Churchkhela, strings of walnuts or hazelnuts dipped again and again in thickened grape juice and dried, look a little like dried sausages and were once food for shepherds and soldiers. Gozinaki, walnuts caramelised in honey, is made for New Year and Christmas; tklapi is sun-dried fruit leather. Fruit and vegetables are full of flavour and cheap: try persimmons, feijoas, pomegranates and grapes in season. Tomatoes, fresh cheese, bread and fruit from the market make one of the best meals in the country.

Wine

Georgia has made wine for some 8,000 years. Wine is part of everyday life and a point of national pride: many gravestones are carved with vines, and the Mother Georgia statue holds a cup of wine for friends and a sword for enemies. Most families still make their own, and the harvest is a celebration. The main region is Kakheti, source of about two-thirds of the country's commercial wine, with the white rkatsiteli and the red saperavi grapes. Racha's Khvanchkara was reputedly Stalin's favourite. Note that Georgians call red wine not red but black.

Home-made wine and chacha for sale in Tbilisi. (Photo: Daniel-tbs, CC BY-SA 4.0)

From the leftovers of winemaking comes chacha, a strong pomace brandy like grappa; distilling for your own use is legal. Spirits are drunk at informal gatherings, never together with wine, though often with beer. Beer has old roots in the mountains, but has no place at a supra.

Water, lemonade and tea

The Caucasus is full of mineral springs, and fizzy, mineral-heavy waters such as Borjomi, Nabeghlavi and Likani are drunk across the former Soviet world. Order just "water" in a restaurant and you get still; ask for the fizzy kind by brand. Georgia also claims one of the first soft drinks: in 1887 a Tbilisi pharmacist, Mitrophane Laghidze, trying to make a cough medicine, mixed soda water with tarragon; the drink caught on across the Russian Empire, and cafés of the company bearing his name still serve syrup-and-soda lemonades. Georgia was once the Soviet Union's main tea garden.

Harvesting tea in Chakvi, around 1910. (Photo: Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, Public domain)

The supra

A supra is a Georgian feast. There are no individual plates: everything is set on the table at once and everyone helps themselves. It is led by a tamada, the toastmaster chosen by the host: witty, eloquent and able to hold his drink, since he must never lose control of the party.

You drink only when the tamada proposes a toast, and toasts are taken seriously: stop talking and listen. They come fast at the start and slow down as the night goes on. Common ones are to God, to peace, to the host or the occasion, to the family, to the children of the world, to friendship. At a funeral feast, many toasts go to the dead. Pace yourself.

At a supra. (Photo: rugbyxm, CC BY 2.0)

Eating out

A restorani is usually upscale with a long menu; a sakhinkle specialises in khinkali and a sakhachapure in khachapuri; a kape is a café. Banquet halls, sabanketo darbazi, take only booked parties. Traditionally whoever invites pays the whole bill. Bigger restaurants often add a service charge of 10–20%, so tipping is optional; cards are accepted mainly in bigger cities and pricier places, so ask first.

Sources

• "Georgian cuisine" from Wikivoyage, by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changed: rewritten in hubnx's own words and condensed; prices left out; each photo under its own licence, credited in its caption. This page is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.