We are on the eighth floor terrace of a relatively new apartment building in the Vedzisi neighborhood, nodding our heads with joker grins like gawkers at a freak show. The view is as spectacular as they come in mountainy Tbilisi, but that’s not what we’re chuckling at. There are 43 ceramic urns – kvevri – buried almost a meter and a half into a bed of sand and perlite in what was supposed to be a swimming pool for a nine-year-old boy. But in an epiphanic moment, the child’s father, 43-year-old doctor, Zura Natroshvili, decided to build a marani in the sky instead. The father of modern advertising, David Ogilvy, once said, “The best ideas come as jokes.” Dr. Natroshvili would probably agree. His friends thought he needed psychiatric help when he first shared his idea.

We met Tega at a friend’s dinner table shortly after moving to Tbilisi in 2002. Tall, debonair, with dark puppy eyes and an ever-present Colgate smile, Tega made it a point from that first meeting to take us under his wing and introduce us to the best Tbilisi had to offer. That was how we first ended up at Salobie, near the ancient capital of Mtskheta. “This place is famous for its beans,” he said. “And its name is Beans!” he chortled (lobio means “beans” in Georgian, and salobie is “house of beans”). The restaurant felt like something between a museum and a summer mountain resort. We were in the original dining room, built next to a giant 300-year-old wooden house from Racha.

2022 was marked by the rebirth and reshuffle of the Tbilisi food scene, which was strongly impacted by almost two years of pandemic-related restrictions. In September, the reopening of the iconic Café Littera located in the Sololaki district was a sign that the lean days were over. Some other restaurants didn’t recover and closed for good but a bunch of new eateries sprang out across town. Quite surprisingly, the war in Ukraine has not affected the trend. In an unlikely turn of events, the influx of thousands of Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians – many of whom are highly-skilled remote workers – have brought a new clientele to the local restaurants and bars.

We met Tega at a friend’s dinner table shortly after moving to Tbilisi in 2002. Tall, debonair, with dark puppy eyes and an ever-present Colgate smile, Tega made it a point from that first meeting to take us under his wing and introduce us to the best Tbilisi had to offer. That was how we first ended up at Salobie, near the ancient capital of Mtskheta. “This place is famous for its beans,” he said. “And its name is Beans!” he chortled (lobio means “beans” in Georgian, and salobie is “house of beans”). The restaurant felt like something between a museum and a summer mountain resort. We were in the original dining room, built next to a giant 300-year-old wooden house from Racha.

We bit into the khinkali, its handmade dough indelicate and sticky, as we like it. Steam poured out the newly made hole, and we blew lightly before slurping up the rich stock and gobbling the dumpling down, even the puckered knob. The ground pork and beef was packed with fresh cilantro, the juices absorbed into the jacket. It was a perfect khinkali. A home wrecker. This seducer of a dumpling is molded by the knowing hands of Manana Osapashvili, born in Gudamakhari, a mountain village in Pasanauri, the heartland of khinkali. A professional cook for 29 years, Manana has been making khinkali since she was 10 years old. Today, she is running the kitchen at Sioni 13, located at the Tbilisi Theological Seminary in Old Town. It is a part of the city known for its tourists and hookah bars, and the mediocre "traditionnel" Georgian restaurants that cater to them.

This was a year of culinary highs for sure, one that involved freshwater eel, lamb ramen, sake and more. Kyuri Cucumbers at Sobaya Nicolas Following a visit to Kyoto’s Nishiki Market, I felt myself yearning for local kyo yasai, vegetables from the Kansai region of Japan. That night we were invited by a local artisan for a Michelin-starred soba meal at Sobaya Nicolas, a much-lauded eatery far from the crowded streets of central Kyoto. A great soba restaurant is judged not only by the quality of soba and sauces, but also by the side dishes accompanying the soba.

The Georgian culinary experience is all about the dinner, stereotypically a glutton’s nirvana of singularly delicious foods stacked plate by plate to the ceiling alongside beer pitchers full of wine. This might explain why, after a night of belt-popping gourmandizing, there is very little in the way of a breakfast culture in Tbilisi. Another explanation might be that Tbiliseli are not morning people. Most cafes open around 11 a.m., which is about the time our neighborhood baker is slapping his first batch of bread in the tone. Nevertheless, people do break the fast at home, often with leftover bread and butter or a chunk of cheese, or maybe day-old khachapuri.

The table was a motif of fresh delights we had never seen before, all the ingredients from the family garden. In due time we would learn about pkhali, chicken tsatsivi and the intrepid Georgian ratatouille, ajapsandali; however, the only thing on our minds was surviving the barrage of toasts our host Aleko was pummeling us with. In Georgia guests are considered gifts from God, though it was clear from the beginning that the god Aleko had in mind was Bacchus. If we failed to drain the water glass full of his wine to the bottom, he would refill it and force us to do the toast right a second time.

For 2,000 years, people have flocked to the Abanotubani baths, whose hot sulfuric waters have long been fabled to possess magical healing qualities. The Persian king Agha Mohammad Khan soaked there in 1795, hoping to reverse the effects of the castration he suffered as a child. He dried off, found his conditioned unchanged and razed Tbilisi to the ground. While people continue to espouse the curative properties of the sulfur baths, we can only vouch for their powers to relieve stress, loosen up sore muscles and help poach the hangover out of you. It is the latter attribute that inspired the local chef Tekuna Gachechiladze to open a restaurant last year that might not cure erectile disorders, but is definitely designed to nurture alcohol-stricken bodies back to life.

Editor’s note: Tbilisi was a new addition to Culinary Backstreets this year, and as we look back on all the great eating we did in 2015, we can’t help but notice that so much of it took place in the city's Sololaki area. There’s a typecast in Georgia that when somebody wants to go into business, they open up a khinkali restaurant. There is a logic to that. About a million people live in Tbilisi, a city built impetuously along the hilly banks of the Mtkvari River. And the adoration every single one of these people has for this boiled dumpling is so reverent, it is as if they see Jesus and his disciples feasting on a steaming platter of kalakuri khinkali for the Last Supper as they bite a hole into the dumpling and slurp its tasty broth.