Mastodawn

Spotted a new Georgian restaurant — Saperavi — on Upper West Side on Amsterdam and couldn’t hold it. I do miss this food and can have it any day.

What a gem!

Perfect pork mtzvadi, amazing selection of pkhali. Although I prefer lamb khinkali, their beef ones were so brothy, tasty, and just the perfect size — not too big to overwhelm, not too small to underserve — we inhaled them piping hot. And an excellent choice of pickles. They even had jonjoli, earthy, slightly bitter flower buds of a Georgian plant.

The two of us skipped khachapuri — for any of the Georgian cheese breads bigger company is better. The bread fills you up quickly and there’s so much on the menu to try.

People serving were easy and genial — as if we were in one of the warm green gardens of Mtskheta and not in Manhattan at Arctic temperatures. Hope this won’t change.

#food #georgianfood #outinnewyork #diningout #upperwestside #mtzvadi #khinkali #pkhali #jonjoli #newyorkrestaurant

Loke Mani Jan 17

Second attempt at making #khinkali. I still can't shape them for shit, but they tasted good and definitely scratched that nostalgic itch.

I followed this #recipe (except I used pork instead of chicken since that's what we have available):
https://momsdish.com/khinkali#jump-to-recipe

It's curious to me sometimes, how some Georgian dishes and songs bring out a deep nostalgia for me, despite not being from this culture at all. I spent a little time in Georgia with family friends on holiday when I was little, and that was enough. The warm and joyous memories of those days are very precious to me.
#cooking #georgianCuisine

Julia Jan 9

It was a family movie night out but dinner first.

Chama Mama on Upper West Side in Manhattan.

Like everything that has a strong connection to childhood, Georgian food will forever hold a particular place in my mind and always draw me in. Especially now, at this strange moment in my life — when there’s everything everywhere all at once and mixed up.

But there’s Georgian food and, then, there’s Georgian food.

Food is an experience.

Georgian food can be a hearty chill out under the warm wing of Georgian friends and family in Tbilisi. It can be an apathetic cold stop in Moscow or we’re-hotter-than-you reminder in Brooklyn.

With an indifferent Soviet cold shoulder service — like a naphthalene vapor this one is hard to exterminate, with good Georgian food, and solid UWS prices, Chama Mama made me feel comfortably back at home, simultaneously keeping things in present.

— Very good pkhali selection.

— Nice variation on Adjaruli.

— Solid pork mtzvadi.

— Not too brothy but nevertheless tasty khinkali.

— Fine adjika trio but some versions leaning towards Chinese crisps.

— And a traditional all-Union popular Medovik cake slapped on the table with a traditional all-Union attitude: Here, we’re done.

The movie though! Don’t miss this slow mellow but stirring collection of three family stories written by Jim Jarmusch. Makes you think about your own, the one you’re writing.

#food #diningout #georgianfood #adjaruli #khinkali #mtzvadi #newyorkrestaurant #upperwestside #movienight #fathermothersisterbrother

Nikolas Kozloff Jun 8, 2025

Time for #Sufis of #Georgia and #vegetarian #khinkali

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250606-how-georgias-pankisi-valley-rewrote-its-story

From terror to tourism: How Georgia's Pankisi Valley rewrote its story

Long overshadowed by headlines of extremism, Georgia's Pankisi Valley is now welcoming travellers with Sufi rituals, mountain trails and home-cooked Kist food.

BBC

N Mar 6, 2025

You guys may be a bit ugly, but you remain my special creatures #khinkali

vaviurka Dec 12, 2024

#khinkali #cooking #dinner

Chuck Darwin Jul 27, 2024

Using methods generally employed to track the evolution and spread of plants and animals over time and across geography,
this paper aims to provide a scientific classification of "pasta ripiena"-- Italian stuffed pasta shapes
-- and how they spread and evolved across what is now Italy.

🔹From the abstract of ‘Evolution of the Italian pasta ripiena: the first steps toward a scientific classification’:

Our results showed that, with the exception of the Sardinian Culurgiones, all the other pasta ripiena from Italy likely had a single origin in the northern parts of the country.
Based on the proposed evolutionary hypothesis, the Italian pasta are divided into two main clades:
a #ravioli clade mainly characterized by a more or less flat shape,
and a #tortellini clade mainly characterized by a three-dimensional shape.

The introduction provides a short history lesson in stuffed foods:
The Italian pasta ripiena are part of a large family of Eurasian stuffed dumplings that similarly come in a wide array of shapes and forms and are known by many different names,
for example, the Turkish #manti, German #maultaschen, Polish #pierogi, Jewish #kreplach, Russian #pelmeni, Georgian #khinkali, Tibetan #momo, Chinese #wonton, Japanese #gyoza, and many others.

It is unclear whether all dumplings had a singular origin or evolved independently,
or how the remarkable diversity observed in Italy is related to the greater variation present in Eurasia.
Based on linguistic similarities, it has been speculated that stuffed dumplings were probably first invented in the Middle East
and subsequently spread across Eurasia by Turkic and Iranian peoples.
Dumplings were known in China during the Han Empire (206 BC-220 AD), where archaeological remnants of noodles from this period were also discovered;
however, in the same era, pasta had not yet made its appearance in Europe.
The Italian ravioli have also been suggested to be a descendent of the Greek manti.

🔷And then moves on to stuffed pastas native to Italy:
In Italy, ravioli are probably the oldest historically documented filled pasta,
even though the early iterations of this dish evidently did not include the enclosing pasta casing.
Between the 12 and 13 centuries, a settler from Savona agreed to provide his master with a lunch for three people made of bread, wine, meat and ravioli, during the grape harvest.
Tortelli and agnolotti first appeared in literature much later.
However, the origins of the iconic tortellini are controversial. The long-standing historical feud between the cities of #Bologna and #Modena over who invented the tortellini was symbolically settled at the end of the 19 century by Bolognese poet and satirist Giuseppe Ceri,
who, in his poem “L’ombelico di Venere” (the navel of Venus), declared Castelfranco Emilia, a town halfway between the two cities, to be the birthplace of tortellini.
According to this legend, one day,
while Venus, Mars and Bacchus were visiting a tavern in Castelfranco Emilia,
the innkeeper inadvertently caught Venus in a state of undress and was so astonished at the sight of the goddess’ navel that he ran into the kitchen and created tortellini in her honor.
Clearly, a product as perfect as tortellini could be inspired only by Venus, the goddess of beauty.
https://kottke.org/24/07/the-origin-evolution-of-italian-stuffed-pasta-shapes