Tbilisi travel guide

Khachapuri

Georgia's national cheese bread—the round Imeruli style in Tbilisi stuffs a ring of flaky dough with sulguni cheese; every bakery and restaurant has its version; breakfast for 80 cents from a Tbilisi street bakery

Khinkali

Georgia's beloved soup dumplings—large pleated pouches filled with spiced beef, pork or lamb broth; hold by the knot, bite a hole to sip the broth first before eating the filling; never eating the knot is tradition

Mtsvadi (grilled meat)

Georgia's BBQ—pork or lamb marinated in pomegranate juice and onions, grilled exclusively over vine-wood cuttings; the smoke from actual vines rather than charcoal is what gives Tbilisi mtsvadi its incomparable aromatic char

Badrijani (walnut-stuffed eggplant)

Sliced eggplant fried then rolled tightly around a spiced paste of ground walnut, garlic, fenugreek and coriander; garnished with pomegranate seeds; one of Georgia's most intricate and beautiful cold starters

Natural wine

Tbilisi pioneered the contemporary natural wine movement—try amber wines made from ancient Rkatsiteli grapes in qvevri by small Kakheti region producers; wine bars on Erekle II Street pour the finest in a tiny cobblestone setting

Churchkhela

Georgia's natural candy—walnuts or hazelnuts threaded on string and repeatedly dipped in concentrated grape juice thickened with flour; dried to a dense chewy log; hung in every Georgian market in autumn colors