Georgia's Khachapuri: A Culinary Journey In Tbilisi (Part 4)

(Read part one of trip HERE)

I put on my rucksack and followed Babar as we headed off to the sulphur baths. He told me to take a towel from the hostel, as it would save me two laris not hiring one at the baths. He was worried it might be closed as it was Christmas Day, but a few of the shops and restaurants on Rustaveli Avenue were open. He changed £20 on the way for laris. The first bureau only took euros, dollars and roubles, but the second took pounds. Every other shop seemed to be a money exchange. The rates were given outside in neon numbers, but I soon found it was rarely what you got inside.

Babar said we’d stop on the way to get breakfast at his usual haunt. It was a small kiosk in an underpass and was run by two women. It specialised in khachapuri – Georgia’s famous cheese-filled bread. The walls were painted bright pink and there was a coffin-like black oven. 

A woman in an apron was at the far end rolling out dough into circles and squares and filling them with cheese. The baked breads lay on silver trays at the front of the kiosk. Some were shaped like Cornish pasties. They were golden brown and looked delicious.

Babar asked which ones had potato in. The woman serving pointed at a tray containing flat oval-shaped bread. He ordered two. They came in plastic bags and were two laris each. They were delicious and we ate them as we walked. They were like cheese and onion pasties, but much better because there wasn’t the grease of pastry. It was a superb breakfast and a hearty introduction to Georgian cuisine.

I read later there are a dozen or so regional types of khachapuri, defined by the shape of the bread, cooking method, but most importantly by the type of filling – everything from minced meat and trout to nettles, spinach, beans and mushrooms. The ones we had, stuffed with buttery mashed potato and cheese, were called khabidzgina - specialities of the Russian-occupied South Ossetia region to the northwest of Tbilisi, a cooler climate where potatoes grow in abundance.

Khachapuri apparently gets its name from two Georgian words – khacho (cottage cheese) and puri (bread). Most are filled with chkinti, a curd-like cheese, and a salty, elastic-like cheese called sulguni. The yeasted dough is similar to naan or pizza in taste and texture. There are numerous recipes, but most contain flour, fermented milk (a yoghurt-like liquid made with kefir grains), eggs, yeast and a little salt and sugar, although there are simpler versions with just flour, water and yeast. It is such a staple of the Georgian diet that economists use a Khachapuri Index – inspired by the Big Mac Index created by The Economist magazine in the 1980s – to monitor inflation by tracking the price of its ingredients.

Khachapuri has such a special place in the country’s gastronomic culture that every family seems to boast its own secret recipe, and no feast is complete without it. However, despite being one of Georgia’s national dishes and certainly its most common food, historians are unsure of its origin. Some whisper – to the fury of proud patriots - it might not be Georgian at all and may be a cousin to pizza. Indeed, the round, thin Megrelian varieties topped with bubbling cheese certainly resemble pizza bianca. Food writer Dali Tsatava, a former professor of gastronomy at the Georgian Culinary Academy in Tbilisi, points out that Roman soldiers travelled through the Black Sea area, bringing recipes for something that resembled pizza. She says tomatoes did not exist in Europe until the 1500s, so it was just cheese and bread, not unlike khachapuri.

The only regret I had was not trying the Gurulian khachapuri which are only baked at Christmas. They are half-moon shaped and contain boiled eggs smoked in the chimney for a couple of days. We walked another 10 minutes as Babar told me about his plans to buy a property in the city. He took me down an alley and pointed at a house for sale that he’d looked at on his last visit. He said the owner had shown him round. Every time he asked the price, she talked about the square meterage and how central it was.

“But how much is it?” he’d asked in exasperation. Babar shook his head and laughed. “She told me it was one million dollars! She didn’t even bother to calculate the price in euros,” he said. “She thought that by joining the EU, she was going to become a millionaire. You can buy an apartment here for 10,000 dollars! Put it this way, you can buy the President for 22,000 dollars, so use that as a yardstick when they talk about prices and work downwards. One million dollars! I just thanked her and walked out.”

We headed south to the ‘old town’ Abanotubani district, on the bank of the Mtkvari River. The sulphur springs had apparently been discovered in the fifth century by King Vakhtang I of Iberia (present-day eastern Georgia) when the area was just thick forest. He had been hunting with his falcon or hawk, depending on the tale, when it took a pheasant and both birds fell into a hot spring and died from burns. He liked the springs so much, he cleared the forest and built a settlement around it. Tbilisi (meaning “warm place” in Georgian) became a popular bathing spot with merchants travelling the Silk Road between Europe and Asia, and the city grew from there.

We got to the baths and headed in. I don’t know what I was expecting. Babar said there was a scam going where all the travel guides and tourist information leaflets directed you to the private baths that you hired by the hour – not the far cheaper public ones. “It’s top of the list on Tripadvisor, the private rooms. But they don’t mention the public ones and it took me a long time to find them. They should tell you about these things. Tripadvisor should tell you. What else are they there for if they don’t tell you?” I nodded and smiled and thought about mentioning how people used to pay for editorial content until the internet took over and changed everything. But I was here to enjoy myself and I didn’t want to dwell too long on what a dead-end job journalism had become.

The private rooms were in brick-built huts, curved at the top, like brown Daleks. A group of tourists had climbed on to the roof of one of them. There was a small park and the public baths lay beyond. We walked down some steps and paid at a kiosk. The cost was five laris each. At the bottom was a long, steamy room full of lockers. The gatekeeper was a fat, angry-looking, bald man who demanded to see our tickets. He asked where Babar was from. “Pakistan,” he said brightly. “Pakistan,” the man repeated, nodding his head gravely. He tried to make us pay for towels but Babar said we’d brought our own. The man said something to the crowd in the room. Babar asked about lockers and the man waved his hands in a shooing gesture and said: “You lock, I don’t open.”

We undressed, wrapped our towels around our waists, and headed into the steam room. It was a dome-shaped building decorated in mosaics. The air was so thick you could barely see more than 10ft. Hot water poured from taps in the ceiling. Some men shaved, some lathered. We showered then sat in a deep bath. The thing that hit you first was the overpowering stench of egg from the sulphur springs. Once it got into your pores it didn’t leave you and I could still smell egg on my skin a day later. But the water was hot, and after that chilly breeze outside, it was wonderful sitting in that steaming tub.

There were two masseurs at work. Large men lay down like slabs of meat on marble platforms and the masseurs got to work, scrubbing them hard with soapy towels. After a few minutes in the bath, I showered again and went into the sauna. There were soggy leaves everywhere. Some of the locals liked to beat themselves with nettles to get the blood flowing, another hangover from the Romans. Or maybe they were just beating away the stench of egg.

Babar said he was going to have a massage for his bad leg. He said it was the main reason he had been to Georgia so many times. He had steam massages in Birmingham, but they cost far more - normally £30 for 30 minutes, but he bought them in blocks of 20 massages for £500. The masseur was a friend and offered “mate’s rates” and wasn’t too happy about the extra discount, but Babar would point out that it was money in the bank, and besides he had to pay interest on the £500.

I went back to the locker room. A side room was open and I could see men in there smoking cigarettes. If I’d known Georgian, I would have seen the sign said “staff only” or “keep out” or something similar. I rolled a cigarette and went in. I heard a shout behind me. One of the masseurs was walking towards me aggressively. Behind him was the fat gatekeeper. I saw the resemblance for the first time. They were definitely father and son. I held out my rolled cigarette for inspection. “No smoking in here,” said the masseur. “No smoking!” said the gatekeeper.

I got changed and was about to head out for some air. Near the stairs was a barber in a tiny dungeon. I asked the gatekeeper about a haircut, but he made a scowling face and pointed at my hair. He was a hard friend to make. He shouted something to the customers towelling themselves near the lockers. It was something like: “Can someone speak to this idiot in English?”

A shy-looking man answered. There were a few words and the young man said: “You need to dry your hair or the machine won’t work.” I thought it was another attempt to get me to pay for a towel. I went to speak to the barber, but through sign language and broken English it turned out that no matter of towel-drying was going to convince him to give me a cut. It would foul up his clippers. I thought about how British barbers charged extra for a wet-cut and why he couldn’t just manage with scissors. He said next time I should get my haircut first, then go for a steam bath afterwards.

I walked outside and waited for Babar. The barber came out a minute later and looked horrified. He gestured for me to put my hat on. I thought at first it would help dry my hair and I could return for a cut, but he was just worried about me getting a cold after going from the heat of the steam room into that freezing wind.

(Continues...)

Georgian Food: A Culinary Journey In Tbilisi (Part 2)

(Read part one of trip HERE)

It was a turbulent flight and the passengers clapped as the plane bumped to a halt at Kutaisi, the mediaeval capital of the Kingdom of Georgia. A man behind me shouted: “Bravo! Bravo! Bellissimo as they say in Italy!” A woman told everyone to remain in their seats until the seatbelt signs were off. She then spoke for a few minutes in Georgian. It was a soft, pretty language. There was the nasally sound of Russia and eastern Europe, but it was faster and more playful somehow.

A gale was blowing. The airport was modern looking and empty. There was only one other plane – another Wizz Air jet – on the tarmac. The queue at passport control was long and slow. The immigration officers seemed to be asking for every passenger’s life story.

When it was eventually my turn, a woman spent a minute flicking through my passport looking at the stamps and visas. “First time in Georgia?” she asked. I told her it was. She stamped my passport with a year-long visa, then handed it back and said “bye bye”. She seemed surprised and slightly suspicious when I said thank you.

It was past midnight and there was a 30-minute wait for the bus that would take us through the mountains to the capital Tbilisi. I bought a large can of Georgian lager and a bottle of water for eight laris (about £2.50). I wondered how much change I’d have got out of a £10 note back at Luton Airport.

Then I thought better of drinking the beer; thinking about the five-hour bus ride ahead. I hadn’t had time to book a hotel and had no idea what I’d do when I got there at dawn. The bus was packed, mostly with British students. At first I thought they were part of a group tour led by an Asian man in his fifties who walked with a stick. He kept wandering up and down the aisle giving updates on when the driver was finally going to turn the heating down and put the ventilation on.

After another 30 minutes or so, the bus left the airport. We climbed slowly up through the mountains and I caught the occasional glimpse of the sheer side of cliffs. There was no yellow hum of city lights, just the twinkle of distant villages, like lakes mirroring the starry sky above. The roads were empty and we passed through endless hamlets where nothing stirred. Occasionally we’d crawl past a roadside café, but apart from the houses, the only buildings seemed to be gas stations, brightly lit and ghostly. There seemed to be so many that if you ran out of petrol you’d have less than a mile to walk to the nearest. I noticed the number of police stations too. Plush glass buildings with all the lights on, and the occasional police officer sitting at a desk doing paperwork. It didn’t make much sense. There wasn’t a soul on the road and no-one was up, and yet they seemed to have the police resources to stop a midnight riot in Paris.

Behind me, an English man was talking on his phone to a woman asking for money. She kept saying: “Not good, not good. I worry much.” She said her rent was due and he eventually agreed to wire her some cash and top up the credit on her phone. “Okay I love you,” she said as the call ended.

At some point we stopped at some great monstrosity in the middle of nowhere that seemed to be half food hall and half supermarket. The man behind tapped me on the shoulder. He was wearing a bulging red fleece, black-rimmed glasses and had a grey quiff. He looked like a fat Stewart Lee. He handed me a five-lari note, and asked me to get him a bottle of water. I hadn’t even planned to get off the bus. I was slightly annoyed at first, but then I realised he used a wheelchair. I looked at the note – on the back was a drawing of a man in shorts holding a fish and a bucket. I handed back the note and said I’d get him some water.

The food hall was empty apart from the sleeping staff and our weary bus party. And we weren’t spending from the look of things. After another interminable, spine-crunching journey through the hills, we joined an empty motorway and picked up speed.

I nodded off and woke to the neon signs of casinos and grand hotels in Freedom Square, in the centre of Tbilisi, where someone had once tried to assassinate US President George W Bush with a hand grenade. In the centre of the square was a huge column, topped with a gold statue of Saint George, the country’s patron saint. In the Soviet era, a statue of Lenin had stood there, but it was torn down in 1991.

Everyone seemed to have someone waiting for them. It was 5am, freezing and I suddenly felt very tired and alone. The man with the stick began to hobble off towards a subway. Either he had lost his tour party or he didn’t have one to start with. He was clutching a Lidl plastic bag that presumably served as his suitcase. I wandered after him and quickly caught up. I asked him if he knew of any hotels that were open. There was a Marriott hotel up the road, but it looked hideously expensive.

Babar, as his name turned out to be, said he’d booked a bed at a hostel and I was welcome to follow him there. We walked for 10 minutes down Rustaveli Avenue, which I would find out later was Tblisi’s main street and named after the mediaeval poet Shota Rustaveli, author of The Knight In The Panther’s Skin.

The city was glittering with golden light. There were hundreds of angels blowing trumpets. They were hanging from wires across the road, lighting up the impressive Soviet architecture. The trees were wrapped in fairy lights. Everything seemed to be gold. I asked whether it was always like this, but Babar looked at me as though I was an idiot and told me it was Christmas Day. The Georgians apparently used a different calendar and celebrated it on January 7. New Year’s Day, confusingly also called the Old New Year, was a week later on January 14. I was worried there might not be room at the inn. If not, there were a few 24-hour bars and restaurants I could sit in until it got light, Babar said.

He said he’d stayed at the hostel a couple of times. It was his fifth trip to Georgia. He was planning to buy an apartment and had already seen a few on previous visits. Property was supposed to be cheap in Georgia, but Babar didn’t look like he had a fiver in his pocket the way he was hobbling down the road with an NHS walking stick, adorned with plasters, in one hand, and a carrier bag in the other. I liked him straight away. He had a confident, easy-going nature and told me about his many trips around eastern Europe. He said his mother had recently passed away, and looked close to tears for a second. “She was my strength,” he said. But he was soon back to his cheerful way.

What worried me was the thought of a hostel. I hadn’t stayed in one for years. The last one had been a homeless hostel in Amsterdam after I had my passport and money stolen and found myself pacing the canals with just six euros to my name. It hadn’t been a pleasant experience. There must have been 40 men in that room. And the smell is something I still remember. It was the smell of rancid vinegar. The time before that, I’d been bitten alive by bedbugs, but that had been a particularly filthy place even by Cambodian flophouse standards.

I was still toying with the idea of finding a bar and drinking myself steadily through morning until the check-in desks opened. But it was bitterly cold and I was worried that Christmas Day might mean all the hotels were full or closed. I was even less confident about finding a bar open at 5am. It certainly didn’t look like a 24-hour city. But Babar said I could probably find somewhere to drink. “Not that I’m calling you an alcoholic,” he said.

I was desperately tired. Even the worst bed in the worst hostel in Gomorrah was better than pacing the streets for a few hours, even if the angels were looking down. Babar told me Airbnb had started opening up in Georgia and they were ridiculously cheap. But he didn’t like the idea of staying in someone’s apartment. “I prefer hostels because you meet people,” he said. He was right about that.

(Continues...)