For a dish so ubiquitous, one would be forgiven to think there’s little to debate about Georgia’s national dumpling, the khinkali. But just as tastes vary, every Georgian has their own khinkali preferences and opinions. That’s certainly the case for chef Gela Arabuli, who believes khinkali has been gentrified and mass produced to a point where most people have forgotten the dumplings’ origins in the mountains and how they should really taste. “Real khinkali is from the high mountains. And there are no pigs in the mountains,” insists Gela, referring to the most popular and common filling of minced beef and pork in equal parts as kalakuri, or “city style,” khinkali.

Before gentrification, Tbilisi’s ancient bath district of Abanotubani was a collage of dome-roofed sulfur baths and carpet shops, claustrophobic grocery stores and teahouses packed inside crooked multi-storied brick buildings with condemnable wooden balconies, a sneeze away from collapse. Yet this quarter is the nucleus of Tbilisi, the site of its founding and from where the multicultural city grew to become a key hub along the Silk Road. Today it is home to a tight, multiethnic community of mostly Azeris, who have lived here for generations. Directly above the baths is the 120-year-old Jumah Mosque, renowned for being a place of worship for both Shia and Sunni Muslims.

Tbilisi stores and markets are festooned now with distinctive sausage-shaped candies called churchkhela, ready for New Year celebrations and then Orthodox Christmas on January 7. They are a very traditional Georgian specialty, usually homemade from grape juice thickened with flour and nuts. But those aren’t the only ingredients you need to make churchkhela – they also require some serious muscle. How could it be otherwise for a food created by Georgian warriors as a sugar hit that wouldn’t perish on a long march? It was, in other words, one of the world’s earliest energy bars. “We still do it the same way as our ancestors,” says Khatuna Saalishvili, as we watch her and her husband, Temuri, start the process in their backyard in the village of Kisiskhevi. A wood fire heats a large metal cauldron filled with the mix of grape juice and flour known as tatara. The steam shines in the winter sun.