What to Eat in Georgia: Typical Georgian Food and Specialties
Ostri: A Spicy Georgian Beef Stew
Ostri sounds like the Slavic word for "spicy", yet the first spoonful doesn't set anything on fire. This Georgian beef stew in a thick tomato sauce with onion, garlic and cilantro is everyday food, cooked from whatever the house has on hand. I tasted it in Kutaisi alongside a supra feast in full swing and at Mapshalia Restaurant in Tbilisi - different each time, and ostri each time.
Supra: The Georgian Feast
A feast where you can't drink whenever you feel like it. Supra is the Georgian feast with a fixed order: a table laid with everything at once and toasts in an unchanging sequence, run by an elected speaker, the tamada. What does the word supra mean, why is the feast wrongly said to be on the UNESCO list, and how do you drink wine from a buffalo horn that can't be put down until it's empty?
Mapshalia Restaurant, Tbilisi: Standing in Line for Georgian Classics
A line forms regularly outside an unremarkable door on Aghmashenebeli Avenue in Tbilisi. Mapshalia is a cheap Mingrelian eatery that Forbes Georgia ranks among the best restaurants in the city. I worked my way through almost its entire menu, from lobio to khachapuri megruli. Here's why I kept coming back more often than anywhere else.