Georgian Food Is Yummy

Khachapuri, the quitiessential Georgian food

We arrived in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, at the end of our journey on the Pamir Highway. Osh was supposed to be a place for us to take some time and relax after the long car journey though the remote regions of Tajikistan.

And we got that.

But I also learned something unexpected in Osh.

I learned it while sweaty, and hungry, and hiding in our hotel room. It was one of those Central Asian summer afternoons where stepping outside feels less like a decision and more like a grave mistake. It was really too hot to exist.

But I was hungry, and hunger waits for no one.

So I did what I always do when I am hot, lethargic, and unwilling to think too hard: I opened Yandex Maps and surrendered my agency to the algorithm.

One of the top-rated restaurants that I found was listed as Georgian food.

Georgia.

The country.

Not peaches. Not sweet tea. Not the SEC.

I knew exactly nothing about Georgian cuisine, but the ratings were glowing. Lots of stars. Rapturous reviews. People typing things like “best meal of my life” in all caps, which is either a red flag or a promise. We called a Yandex car, climbed in, and were delivered to a small Georgian restaurant in a neighborhood well removed from anything resembling a tourist zone.

This is always a good sign.

Now, when you encounter a cuisine you don’t understand—menus full of words that look like someone smashed a keyboard in a fit of emotion—you have two choices. You can panic and order something safe. Or you can do the far braver, far wiser thing:

You tell the server, “We have no idea what we’re doing. Please help.”

That is what we did.

The server smiled. A smile that said, I have been waiting for you. And moments later, two dishes arrived that would alter the course of my culinary life.

First: Khachapuri.

Khachapuri is not food. Khachapuri is a concept. A philosophy. A cheese-based emotional support system.

Imagine bread. Flat bread. Now imagine that bread has been hollowed out and filled with an irresponsible amount of molten cheese. Now imagine that someone cracked an egg into the middle of this cheese lava, added a heroic slab of butter.

Are you imagining it?

You tear off the crust, stir the egg and butter into the cheese like you’re performing a sacred ritual, and then scoop. It is obscene. It is perfect. It is what would happen if a pizza and a fondue had a beautiful, reckless child and raised it with no rules.

I took one bite and immediately understood two things:

1.     I had been living my life incorrectly.

2.     I would never emotionally recover from this. And that was a good thing.

Then came Khinkali.

Khinkali

Khinkali are large Georgian dumplings, cousins to Chinese soup dumplings—one of my favorite foods in the world. They are plump, pleated, and filled with meat and broth, designed to be eaten carefully lest you wear the contents like a regret.

You pick them up by the little dough handle on top. You bite a small hole. You slurp the broth. You then eat the rest. If you do this incorrectly, the dumpling will punish you. This is not negotiable.

They were very good. Not khachapuri good. Not xiaolongbao-level transcendence. But very, very good. Comforting. Hearty. Earnest. Like a dumpling that wants you to have a nice day.

And just like that, we learned something important:

Georgian food is a thing.

A very good thing.

From that moment on, we became accidental Georgian food missionaries. We ate Georgian food for the first time in Osh. Then again in Bishkek. Then in Almaty. If there was Georgian food within striking distance, we were there, chasing that first khachapuri high like fools.

And then we came home to Hawaii.

A place with many wonderful foods. Many diverse cuisines. Many things to love.

And absolutely no Georgian restaurants.

No khachapuri.

No khinkali.

No easy access to the ingredients required to make a passable version at home.

I walk through grocery stores now, haunted. I see bread. I see cheese. I know they are inadequate. I think about Georgia the way one thinks about a former love who lives very far away and never texts.

I didn’t go to Osh looking for Georgian food. I didn’t even know it existed. But now it lives rent-free in my head, unavailable and irreplaceable—because travel didn’t just show me a new place, it introduced me to a joy I can’t have anymore, and so now . . . I am sad.