Nearly Neutral Travel

As we might have mentioned once or twice, we really enjoyed Turkey, but the one place where it fell slightly short for us was on food. Make no mistake, nearly all the individual meals were delicious, but for us, the variety just wasn’t there – particularly in the east. Most towns had a speciality kebab, but to our untrained palates they were remarkably similar to each other! If anything, this made arriving in Georgia an even bigger treat. The food is just SO good, with a focus on fresh, seasonal and regional fare.

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been truly feasting on good food and wine, and this post is a bit of an ode to some of our favourites. I’m not usually much of a food photographer (I’m much, much more interested in the eating), so I was cringing taking all of the photos that follow! Hopefully they capture some of the deliciousness, though.

Khachapuri

Boat-shaped Adjaruli khachapuri is probably what most people imagine when they think of Georgian food (if they think of anything at all – I truly believe that Georgia has one of the world’s great unknown cuisines), but there are actually lots of regional varieties of khachapuri. All involve some element of breadiness and plenty of cheese, and some add further cheese, butter or eggs. Having khachapuri’d a little too hard last time we were in Georgia, we were a bit more measured this time, but we still ate a horrifying amount of cheese and regretted none of it!

My favourite version is Imeruli khachapuri (I’m looking very happy holding one in the photo below) – it’s easy to eat on the go because the cheese is stuffed inside the bread, and it doesn’t go quite so big on the cheese as some other versions. By the way – you might be thinking along the lines of pizza, but it doesn’t really taste like that at all. The cheese is much saltier and tangier than mozzarella and you can’t eat nearly as much in one go (trust me, I’ve tried).

Khinkali

We’ve already raved about khinkali, but these filled dumplings are probably our favourite Georgian food – although it’s a very close contest. When we arrived in Tbilisi and realised that our days in Georgia were numbered, we ordered some as part of nearly every meal! We tried some different varieties, including ‘branded’ khinkali (below left – a speciality of Zodiaqo) and mushroom khinkali, which came with a butter sauce (below right), but kalakuri remain our top pick. We met an Armenian-Russian couple on the Tbilisi – Yerevan sleeper train who are convinced that khinkali taste even better in Yerevan (although they admitted they hadn’t tried our faves from Khinkali Ludi in Batumi), so we’re very excited to follow their restaurant recommendation when we get there next week!

Ojakhuri

The name translates to ‘family meal’, and it’s a simple dish that’s definitely more than the sum of its parts. I think it can be made with other meats, but we had the pork version a few times, oven baked with potatoes, onion, garlic, white wine and topped with pomegranite seeds. Oli already wrote a love letter to the version we had at Cafe Laila in Mestia (left pic), and I think this wins the award for us – they were all good, though. My mouth is watering just thinking about it!

Ostri

Ostri is a thick, rich and fragrant beef stew that tastes SO much better than it looks. We ate this a couple of times when the weather felt particularly autumnal (i.e. chilly) and it was a total delight. Our winner (below left) was from the tiny (and oddly-named) Cafe Tourist in Borjomi, which was super herby and had a surprise addition of sour cream that was so delicious in combination with the rich flavours of the stew.

Chicken with tkemali sauce

I think this takes the award for the most beautiful meal we ate in Georgia.

We met an American chap called Ted on a marshrutka who told us about a sensational meal he’d had at Asi Khinkali in Tbilisi. I was dying to try fried chicken with tkemali, a sour plum sauce, but his description convinced me to wait until we reached Tbilisi and could eat the same version. We made it there on our final evening and it was worth the wait. The chicken was succulent with a salty, crispy skin, and the sauce was the perfect contrast – cold (which surprised us!) very sour and almost citrussy.

Walnut everything

Georgian cuisine goes big on walnuts. One of our favourite ways to eat them is in nigvziani badrijani (aubergine rolls filled and topped with walnut paste). These are light, garlicky and really delicious as a starter, and we ordered them almost everywhere. They were consistently good – we couldn’t pick a favourite.

A variation on this is pkhali (top right pic), which adds vegetables such as spinach, beetroot or cabbage to the walnut paste mix. The best pkhali we had were at Heart of Batumi, but we hadn’t decided to write this post at that point so there’s no photo of these!

Also, they’re not walnut, but an honourable mention for the pickled bladdernut buds (top of the main photo below), which we only ordered because they sounded like something from Harry Potter. They tasted a bit like it, too.

Pine cone honey

This is a speciality of Borjomi that I just had to try. It’s also known as pine cone jam, which better captures how it is prepared (boiling green pine cones in sugar syrup). Despite the name(s), it was nothing like any honey or jam I’ve ever tasted – it was the colour of blood oranges with a sweet, tangy, fruity taste and then a fresh, resinous aftertaste. I could only really compare it to how I would imagine eating a Christmas tree might taste! We ate it on bread so fresh that it was still warm, sold to Oli directly from the bakery by a lady with floury hands.

On that note, it’s probably worth mentioning the phenomenal bread in Georgia. Baked fresh in flat loaves throughout the day, it’s somehow soft, chewy and stretchy all at the same time.

Borano

Finally, I had to mention Borano for being the most aggressively unhealthy dish we ate in our 19 days in Georgia. Made of melted sulguni cheese, it was like fondue but without the dipping (unless we were doing something very wrong!) The guide that we’d read suggested that there was a version that included potato, if you fancied something lighter. Any dish that is made lighter by the addition of potato is sure to be quite something! And yes, that is butter on top. Don’t worry, we didn’t finish this. Our arteries wouldn’t let us.

I’m sorry if this post made you hungry – my stomach is now rumbling after proof reading the above! Georgia is a delicious country 😋🇬🇪

Borjomi, also known as the pearl of the Caucasus, is a small resort town in central Georgia. It’s well known throughout ex-Soviet countries for its natural mineral water springs, which are said to have many healing properties, and it’s a popular bottled drink throughout the region. We stayed two nights here, which gave us one full day to make the most of Borjomi’s offerings.

Most of Borjomi’s sites are situated in a gorge cut between the mountains by the Borjomula river. The river is criss-crossed by a number of bridges, including the one below, which also featured a charming guard who inspected passers by between naps in the sun.

From the bridge, we continued upstream, passing countless market stalls and some impressively ornate architecture. This is where the fancier resort hotels are located, but alas it was a little walk for us from the main town centre.

Arriving in Borjomi’s Central Park, we were greeted by some very well sculpted gardens, and the source of the town’s fame – a water fountain created from one of the gorge’s many natural springs. We quickly downed one of our bottles of tap water to create an empty vessel, and Sara went to fill it up.

She subsequently tried it and pulled a face, before handing it to me. It was certainly an acquired taste – warm, subtly carbonated, sweet and salty on the palette with an eggy aftertaste. Just what I needed to settle my stomach.

Not wanting to waste it, Sara kept the Borjomi water in her bottle for several days after this. She insisted that she was drinking and enjoying it, while in reality getting increasingly dehydrated.

We continued through the park past what is apparently the “most extensive ecologically-themed amusement park in the Caucasus.” You can’t argue with that! However, each of the rides was motionless, with many under covers already. I guess we’re well into shoulder season now, and we’d seen plenty of photos of the town under snow in the winter. Still, we amused ourselves on anything that wasn’t bolted down.

Continuing further upstream, the fairground rides ran out leaving just a path beside the river, which produced a constant and soothing accompaniment of white noise as we walked. The path weaved its way across over the river via a series of increasingly rotten bridges, on which old and broken slats had been covered up by new wood, giving them a patchwork appearance.

Eventually, after some back and forth (we were under some confusion – no change there), we arrived at our destination – a trio of hot (well, warm-ish) pools filled from the mountain’s famous springs. Similar to the fountain, these also gave off a pungent sulphur smell, but were just mild enough in temperature to encourage us in for a short wallow. Much like drinking the water, soaking in the pools is supposed to cure some motor and nerve-related ailments, along with pretty much everything else. An information board aroused our suspicions when it described the pools as being highly effective at curing symptoms that were already in remission. Hmmmm.

Upon exiting the park, we couldn’t pass up the chance to ride yet another cable car. This one took us back over the park, and up to the top of a cliff overlooking the gorge along with the rest of the Borjomi.

Sara assured me that it wasn’t anywhere near as shonky as the one she rode a few days earlier in Kutaisi, although its departure from the lower station was slightly more violent.

We were met at the top by yet another rusting Ferris wheel, although this one didn’t look like it had seen any visitors in quite a while. Not wishing to push our luck any further, we opted to walk back down to the park via a highly educational nature trail. This was all fun and games until we spotted a snake rustling through the bushes next to path, prompting a rendition of Sara’s famous “Snakey watch, Spider watch” song (memorable for her bold attempt to rhyme ‘watch’ and ‘forest’), as we hurriedly descended back to the relative safety of the central park.

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All in all, Borjomi provided a very enjoyable mountain retreat en route to Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. Still, we were also excited to return to the modern luxuries of a big city, such as craft beer and Airbnbs with washing machines.