The New Adventures of Amy and Tom

The spice of our life

Georgian food is really good. The thing about Georgian food is that it's all there is to eat in Georgia. Imagine

if all you could ever eat was Chinese food. "I love Chinese food!" you say. Of course you do. And I love Georgian

food.

Here's a sample menu for a restaurant in Kutaisi:

Imeruli Khatchapuri - flat bread with salty cheese filling
Penovani Khatchapuri - bread a little like a crossiant with salty cheese filling

Penovani Lobiani - above bread with spicy kidney bean filling

Kitri Pomidori Salad - Cucumber, Tomato, Onion, Cilantro salad.
Olivie Salad - potato, carrot, pea, onion, dill and mayonaise salad

Badrijani Nigovzit - strips of eggplant folded over a walnut and spice paste

Kababi - ground meat in the shape of a really big hot dog, cooked on a stick over coals, served with onions,

ajika (a red peper and garlic spice), and spicy tomato sauce.

Mstvadi - chunks of meat cooked on an stick over coals, served with onions and pomegranite seeds.

Ojakuri - meat and potatoes cooked up together with onions in a clay dish called a ketsi.

Lobio - kidney bean soup.

Ostri - tomato based meat and potato soup.

Fried Potatoes - if you close your eyes and squint, it's almost like steak fries.

Khinkali - a dough dumpling filled with meat and boiled, served with black pepper on top.

food stacked up at a supra

There are a few places in town with a few more things on the menu, but mostly, these are the only things you can

get at a restaurant. The first few months were were here, we kept scouring the menus of all the cafes in town

searching for something we hadn't eaten before, something new, something that wasn't khatchapuri. We've stopped

looking at the menus now. We eat khatchapuri for lunch everyday.

So, here is a sample of what we eat at home:

Salty cheese and bread (with a little hot sauce, makes a nice little snack)
Ostri
Lobio (typical for fasting days)
Kitri Pomidori (mostly just in summer)
Fried Potatoes
Eggs ( sometimes scrambled with cheese and hot sauce )
Adjahp Sandali - tomato based stew with eggplant, peppers, potatoes, onions and carrots. (typical for fasting

days)
Meatball soup - veggie broth soup with gigantic meatballs with rice in the broth
Chicken soups - not with noodles, but sometimes rice. ALL chicken parts go in the soup, bones and all. I do mean

ALL.
Green Lobio - green beans and potatoes and onions (sort of stewy, also good for fasting days)
Cutleti - ground meat with spices patted into a football shape and fried in oil. Technically Russian in origin.
Fruit - In season

Here's the food order at a big supra:

Already on the table when you arrive:
Bread
Kitri Pomidori
Olivie Salad
Khatchapuri
Lobiani
Room temperature pork
Room temperature chicken
Satsivi (walnut sauce to go with chicken and pork, served room temperature)
Badrijani
Pickles and pickled things
Fruit
Candy

What arrives shortly after the supra starts:
Bread
Ostri
Maybe another hot stewy thing
More Khatchapuri

optional plate change

Then, in pretty quick succession:
Bread
Fried Potatoes
Mstvadi
Kababi (or maybe Kumpati, a sort of sausage, or both)
Ojakuri
More Ostri
More Khatchapuri

mandatory plate change

Next:
Bread
Cake

optional plate change

Arriving toward the end:
Bread
Khinkali

mandatory plate change

And finally:
Bread
Coffee / Tea
More cake

The bread will continue coming out until the men stop drinking.

Flavors we get alot of:
Salt
Yeast
Onion
Garlic
Cilantro
Dill
Crushed Red Pepper
Lemon
Walnut

It's fun to hear about all the different foods! Maybe I missed it, or forgot (sorry), but what is a fasting day? Miss you guys - Hope you Easter mini vacation was wonderful. It was great to talk to you, Amy!

An answer from Amy
** A fasting day is a day during the Georgian Orthodox Calendar when people cannot eat any animal products whatsoever (including meat, dairy and eggs). A little like the Roman Catholic calendar, the weeks preceding Easter are full of fasting. Some Georgians fast every single day during lent, some only on Wednesdays and Fridays during lent, some just on Fridays during lent. There is alot of personal choice involved.

Thanks for the question!

Hello,

Food you are being served there is not an everyday food in Georgia. These are festive dishes reserved for guests both local and foreign and until you stop being one you can not escape these favourites.

Please do not forget that you are in a poor country where bread cutlet and macaroni khachapuri were the only delicacies available 12-15 years ago apart from daily bread, lobio, false soups and eggplant/pepper medley preserved in oil and vinegar.

What you represent in locals eyes, even though you are never told this in your face, is clueless, wealthy foreign kids treating hosts like little children by teaching them what is good and bad and what they ought to do in their own country.

The only way the locals tolerate that is realizing that you still have some potential merits: You can be exploited monetarily or provide fantazies of getting married to a foreigner and be rescued from undignified existence in a poor country.

The other way you are useful is by striking their egos and showing them that you are "dazzled" with the native culture, local exotic customs and dishes. I am sure many of them keep asking you how you like Georgia and its food and expect you to prise it endlessly. It is not a bad trait of Georgian people and I am confident you would feel and act exactly the same if you were stuck in this environment of poverty, hopelessness and constant feeling of being degraded by any auslander who controls the purse strings.

Getting back to the cuisine, the assortment of Georgian festive dishes in existence is definitely not limited to those you listed but the reason not everyting has been offered to you is:

1. It is considered an insult to feed a guest with broth based food suited for a poor peasant. On the other hand Georgians often eat bread with soups that are imported from other nations - Borsch would be the best example of that followed with the so called "false soup" that would mean a vegetarian soup -animal protein being a luxury and all.

2. Some of the things are a Georgianized dishes from other cultures and Georgians would want you to experience and praise only the real ones.

3. Georgians were the ones who enjoyed the nice warm climate and could grow and use vegetables, herbs and spices in large quanitities in former Soviet Union and they are acustomed to have their "exotic cuisine" admired by the likes of Russians who themselves only eat or used to eat boiled meats with potatoes and bread. You, being a foreign nordic type, are most likely naively considered equally uneducated in the ways of spices as Russians and are being enlightened by offering spicy food and limiting bland generic ones.

4. Some dishes have more ingredients that makes food more expensive not necessarily raising its deliciousness so people go ahead with tried and true recipes.

If you would like to see what else is available, here is a very nice compilation of Georgian dishes
http://georgiantaste.blogspot.com/

I would also add that a hot tea with a slice of lemon and sugar accompanied with bread and butter (maybe a slice of cheese on special occasions) was the regular breakfast while I was growing up there. Sometimes it would be a sweet porridge of some kind based on milk and rice, wheat or oats.

Dinner would be some combination of the starch(mostly bread) and protein or salad. Examples would be fried potatoes with bread, hot dogs with bread, mashed potatoes with bread, sausage sandwiches, spicy hamburgers(cutlets) with bread or pasta, lobio with roasted onions or herbs and bread, tkemali with bread, fried or soft boiled eggs with bread, salad with bread and so on.

Supper could again be tea based probably on some fruit preserves and bread or pancakes with sweetened sour cream on special occasions.

I do not think the above everyday menu is much different from the usual North American diet of a working person. Here you would have quick milk and cereal or oatmeal as breakfast followed with coffee, For lunch and dinner you would have some food based on protein, starch and raw vegetable - virtually any meal combo from national chains of fast food and pseudo ethnic restaurants such as happy greek fit the profile.

How is eating khachapuri every day for lunch different from eating pizza everyday and I see that quite often in north america.

Please do not consider this comment mean spirited. It is intended to be honest and offer a view of a Georgian that has nothing ot be gained from this.