The first time I encountered what Tiko Tuskadze describes as “perhaps the most iconic of all Georgian dishes” was in her London restaurant, Little Georgia, back in the days when it was a tiny space on Broadway Market. If “traditional cheesebread … baked to order” sounded good on the menu, the reality of khachapuri was even better: a golden round of fluffy, buttery bread spilling forth frills of hot, salty dairy on to the plate (this is the kind of thing that passes for fast food in Georgia, according to Silvena Rowe, which makes me feel as if we’ve been slightly short-changed.)
Tuskadze goes on to explain in her book Supra that there are “as many variations … as there are families in Georgia” – the boat-shaped, open adjaruili that Polina Chesnakova notes has “taken the internet by storm”, the Ossetian mashed potato variety and the Gurian take with hard-boiled eggs and a “supremely fluffy, slightly oniony, soufflé-like cheese filling”, which inspires Caroline Eden to share with readers of her book Green Mountains the glorious Georgian word shemomechama, “which loosely translates as, ‘I accidentally ate the whole thing’”. Here, however, I’m going to concentrate on what Chesnakova says is “by far the one most commonly consumed in Georgia itself”, and also the one that reminds Tuskadze most of home, namely imeruli khachapuri, originally from the west-central region of Imereti, which is “essentially a flat bread stuffed with buttery imeruli cheese curds and cooked on the stovetop”. Need I say more?
