<p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#781e2a] underline" href="https://culinarybackstreets.com/cities-category/tbilisi/2022/living-vino/"><strong><u>The Vegan Wine Bar: </u></strong></a><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34)">Living Vino resides in Tbilisi’s charming and rapidly gentrifying crumbly old quarter of Sololaki, famous for its historic buildings with their grand neo-baroque facades and ornate wooden balconies that hover over quiet courtyards. Founder Dimitri Safonov took over the charming, ivy cocooned storefront of a previous restaurant that retired during the pandemic. The restaurant’s menu offers a few imitation meat options in addition to excellent salads and pastas. Dimitri believes the vegan meat options reassure wary newcomers to vegan dining. They can start with something familiar – the house Zen burger made from a patty of mushroom and seitan does a great job of replicating a meaty chewy texture. Served as a lunchtime combo with zucchini salad and cauliflower wings, it’s one of the restaurant’s best sellers.&nbsp;</span></p><p><br><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34)">A late spring lunch of gnocchi with artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes dressed in coriander pesto paired perfectly with a chilled glass of DoReMi’s crispy Tsitska. A meal more deserving of a dinner date on a well-laid table than a bar stool. A selection of salubrious wines include Baiai’s Krakhuna and Gravitas Kisi, a South African Chenin Blanc, as well as shots of smooth Ukranian honey-and-pepper vodka and Georgian fruit chacha. The </span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">ulterior motive Living Vino has for Tbilisi:&nbsp; a space for conscientious eating while not compromising on the wine. But it’s a ploy we’re happy to fall for and raise our wine glasses to.</span></p>

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<p><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34)">In a cozy cellar in the heart of Tbilisi’s historic Sololaki neighborhood, seven winemakers have come together to offer an alternative convention to winemaking and consumption. They call it Vino Underground, but we call it wine heaven. They offer some 100 family-produced Georgian wines, most made the same way for thousands of years in ceramic <em>kvevris</em>. Our host walked us through a tasting with profound knowledge of the background of each bottle – and enthusiasm. We recommend the Rkatsiteli, Georgia’s most-popular white, as well as a straw-colored, citrusy Kisi.</span></p><p><br><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34)">Vino Underground isn’t the kind of place you visit if you’re hungry, which is unheard of in this Black Sea nation where wine and supper are as inseparable as salt is from the sea. But they do offer savory treats well suited to partnering with their wide selection of wines, which also includes European and Kiwi vintages. We skipped the platter of local cheeses, preferring to try that evening’s specials of fried Sulguni cheese with sorrel and Ekala with walnuts.</span></p><p><br></p>

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<p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#781e2a] underline" href="https://culinarybackstreets.com/cities-category/tbilisi/2020/azarphesha/"><strong><u>The Most Traditional</u></strong><u>: </u></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">Up above Freedom Square where the Sololaki and Mtatsminda neighborhoods blend together, there is a 100-year-old building with an apartment five steps below the sidewalk. It’s a warm, intimate space, part living room, part museum, combining owner Luarsab Togonidze’s love for Georgian folklore with his other passions: natural wine, food, and music.&nbsp;</span></p><p><br><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">Azarphesha sources seasonal organic produce from known growers. Co-owner John Wurdeman is a vegetarian, so there is a meat-free slant, although the roasted chicken tabaka is no-frills magic with the crispiest skin in town. The food here is both traditional and original, and the Rkatsiteli is just one of many delicious natural wines on the menu. John is the leading emissary for Georgia’s natural wine movement, after all.</span></p><p><br><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">The restaurant seats around 28 people in the main room. Luarsab says they have been offered a bigger space but they believe an intimate setting provides for a more rewarding dining experience, which in Azarphesha’s case often means hearing polyphonic singing break out at a table and feeling as if you are at a bonafide supra, or Georgian feast. Luarsab embraces the opportunities to be <em>tamada</em>, the toastmaster, with pride and raises what is often a repetitive proletarian drinking ritual to an art form.</span></p>

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<p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#781e2a] underline" href="https://culinarybackstreets.com/cities-category/tbilisi/2020/dadi-wine-bar/"><strong><u>The All-Day Menu: </u></strong></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">Dadi focuses on small, family-owned natural vintages and offers at least 30 wines from all parts of the country, and from as many grapes as possible. A huge map of Georgia adorns a wall with thumbtacks indicating the villages their wines hail from. “Our only criteria is that the wine we sell is healthy. We don’t just sell our personal favorites,” owner Dina Ramazanova explains.</span></p><p><br><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">In the spirit of a professional sommelier, Dina’s partner Sasha Novikov likes to select wine for people based on what he thinks they might like. Dadi also dishes up some tasty eats to pair. Dina developed a menu that changes with the seasons, breakfast items included. She likes to add personal touches to Georgian dishes like <em>shkmeruli</em> – she tosses cilantro and parsley into the creamy, garlicky sauce for the chicken. She also Georgianizes Italian dishes like Caprese salad with a fresh milky sulguni that is damn-near mozzarella.</span></p><p><br></p>

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<p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#781e2a] underline" href="https://culinarybackstreets.com/cities-category/tbilisi/2018/bina-37/"><strong><u>The Best View: </u></strong></a><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34)">On the the eighth-floor terrace of Bina n37, the view is as spectacular as they come in mountainy Tbilisi, but more spectacular are the 43 ceramic urns – <em>kvevri</em> – buried almost a meter and a half into a bed of sand and perlite in what was supposed to be a swimming pool.&nbsp; The original plan was to make natural wine in the village of Saguramo, about a half-hour drive north of the city. But while that idea was being fleshed out, Zura Natroshvili bought 15 plastic barrels in 2015 and filled them up with four tons of grapes on the terrace of the block apartment he had recently bought. The results weren’t so bad for plastic barrel wine, so he bottled it and with a novice’s enthusiasm shared his wine at Tbilisi’s Young Wine Festival in 2016.</span></p><p><br><span style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34)">Feedback was positive, stoking the winemaking fever that had been creeping under the doctor’s skin. He couldn’t wait for the Saguramo project so he double-checked with the contractors to make sure the structure could handle 13 tons of fermenting grapes and got the green light. It’s a <em>marani </em>(Georgian wine cellar) in the sky, with 10 grape varieties. The terrace is the best summer wine and dine spot in Tbilisi, with original concepts soaring above a city full of traditional Georgian fare. A warm day and seafood calls for <em>tsitska</em>, a crispy white with nutty undertones. Meat and the budding<em> saperavi</em> make a perfect pair.</span></p>

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<p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" class="text-[#781e2a] underline" href="https://culinarybackstreets.com/cities-category/tbilisi/2021/sulico-wine-bar-2/"><strong><u>The Biggest Selection: </u></strong></a><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">Wine bars are a relatively new trend in Georgia and about the greatest thing to happen since the invention of the kvevri. And while it is nice to walk into a well-stocked place with a homey, original setting, a good wine bar must know what it is pouring. If it also dishes up enticing eats, consider yourself in paradise on earth. Suliko (with a K) is a Georgian name which means soul. Nia Odzelashvili opened her Sulico in August 2018. The young entrepreneur couldn’t ask for a better place – nestled below Zandukeli Street on the ground floor of a 19th-century brick building, the plant-filled courtyard seats about two dozen and inside there is room for about 20 more.</span></p><p><br><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0)">Formerly the unofficial sommelier at Amber Bar, local wine zealot Sandro Macedoneli –&nbsp; the wine manager – is as “somm” as they come, certificate or not. Sulico stocks some 130 different bottles, most of which are natural kvevri wines from family vintners. While nosing and sipping, Sandro explains that he doesn’t just pair wine with food, but with people too. “This is a wine bar, I didn’t want to overwhelm it with a big menu,” says Baia, the chef. It may be small, but the menu packs an enormously delicious punch, starting with a gratis basket of bread and ramekin of raw sunflower seed oil with red adjika. Inspired by warm olives she had once in Spain, Baia raises the stakes and sautés them in wine, red pepper and oregano. You will want to start with these and maybe order a glass of Rkatsiteli to go with them, unless Sandro recommends something else.</span></p><p><br></p>

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