June 23, 2020
Fine(d) Dining: Tbilisi Restaurants Face Penalties Upon Reopening
TbilisiThe officials from the Ministry of Health came late in the evening on a Friday night and entered Tbilisi’s popular gastro-entertainment complexes Fabrika and Ghvinis Karkhana-Wine Factory #1. They knew there would be a lot of people here celebrating life again after two and a half months in lockdown. They also understood that even with…
July 18, 2019
Cafe Littera: A Tbilisi Culinary Pioneer Faces an Uncertain Future
TbilisiOn June 20, Georgian Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze signed a decree abolishing the Writer’s House of Georgia, Tbilisi’s leading institution of literary culture and the home of Cafe Littera, the restaurant that gave birth to the culinary revolution Georgia is currently going through. As soon as the ink was dry, the Writer’s House accounts were…
September 9, 2016
Farewell Lokanta Maya: Istanbul and Local Culinary Pioneer Hit Hard Times
IstanbulWhen Didem Şenol decided to open her first restaurant on an out-of-the-way street in the then-sleepy Karaköy neighborhood of Istanbul, the young chef’s friends thought she was making a huge mistake. “They said, ‘Are you crazy? There’s nothing there, no one will go there.’ But Karaköy was close to my home in Galata, and I…
