Georgian cooking sits between Persia and the Black Sea: walnut sauces, sour plum, blue fenugreek, and 8,000-year-old qvevri winemaking. Three days across Dezerter Bazaar, Vera's bakeries and the wine cellars of Old Tbilisi, eaten the way locals do.
Tbilisi's chaotic central market beside the train station, open roughly 08:00–19:00 daily. Wander the cheese hall for sulguni and imeruli, buy churchkhela (walnut-and-grape-must candles), sun-dried tklapi fruit leather, and blue fenugreek by the scoop.
A no-frills khinkali canteen locals pack at lunch. Order kalakuri (spiced meat with broth) by the piece, grip the topknot, bite a hole, sip the juice. Pair with tarkhuna lemonade or a jug of house wine straight from the barrel.
Basement bakeries along Kiacheli and Barnovi streets slap dough onto the walls of a clay tone well, pulling out canoe-shaped shotis puri in minutes. Buy a loaf still too hot to hold, plus nazuki, the cinnamon-and-raisin sweet bread from Surami.
The natural-wine bar that launched Georgia's qvevri revival, in a vaulted cellar on Galaktion Tabidze. A rotating list of only unfiltered amber and dry reds from small Kakheti growers, served with sulguni, jonjoli and nadugi.
A local chain treated as the benchmark for the cheese-bread canon: imeruli, megruli topped with extra sulguni, and the boat-shaped adjaruli arriving with a raw yolk and butter to stir in while the bread is still molten.
A modern kitchen rebuilding village recipes from regional archives: lobio beans in a clay pot with mchadi cornbread and pickles, pkhali walnut-and-spinach pâtés, and elarji, the squeaky cornmeal-and-sulguni dish from Samegrelo.
Over 700 Georgian labels shelved by region, with a tasting counter where staff walk you through saperavi, otskhanuri sapere and rare mtsvane. Guided flights explain qvevri fermentation and Georgia's 525-plus indigenous grape varieties.
A courtyard restaurant in a restored Chugureti house where chef Meriko Gubeladze reworks Georgian classics — chicken in blackberry sauce, chakapuli lamb stewed with tarragon and green plums, and satsivi walnut sauce done properly.
The 24-hour kitchens ringing Vakhtang Gorgasali Square are where night ends and morning starts. Order khashi tripe soup with garlic and vinegar — the ritual Tbilisi hangover cure — or kubdari, the Svan meat pie packed with dried coriander.
Pavement counters selling lobiani bean bread, sausage-stuffed kababi rolled in lavash with raw onion and sumac, and cups of tarkhuna. Bakery windows along Marjanishvili sell penovani flaky cheese pastry by the tray straight from the oven.
A Soviet sewing factory turned courtyard of independent kitchens in Chugureti. Speciality coffee at Coffee Lab, Georgian craft beer, chacha cocktails and Moulin Electrique's bread, all eaten at long tables under the graffiti walls.
End with a supra, the Georgian feast governed by a tamada toastmaster who leads toasts to peace, ancestors and the dead in strict order. Tables fill with pkhali, badrijani nigvzit, mtsvadi skewers and unlimited qvevri wine.