Georgian Cooking Class with Khinkali and Khachapuri Tbilisi

The cooking venue on Rustaveli Avenue

The class takes place in the dining room of a restaurant on the third floor of a shopping centre on Rustaveli Avenue, the broad tree-lined boulevard that runs from Freedom Square past the Opera House, the Parliament building and the National Museum. You can enter from Rustaveli Avenue itself or from the parallel Alexander Griboyedov Street, and the Rustaveli metro station is a few minutes away on foot. The session is deliberately held at the tables rather than in the professional kitchen, so that cooking, talking and tasting happen in the same relaxed space, which is what makes this Tbilisi cooking class feel like an evening with Georgian friends rather than a lesson.

Groups are small enough for the chef to check every fold, and the dining room is wheelchair accessible. Because the venue sits on the main avenue, it is easy to combine the class with a morning or afternoon in the old town, a fifteen-minute walk south, or with a stroll along Rustaveli Avenue before you arrive.

Khinkali, the pleated dumplings of the Georgian mountains

Khinkali came down to Tbilisi from the highland regions of Pshavi, Khevsureti and Mtiuleti, where shepherds filled dough with spiced meat and boiled the parcels in large pots. The classic filling is minced beef and pork with onion, coriander, chilli and cold water, which turns into broth inside the dumpling as it cooks; cheese, mushroom and potato versions exist for those who prefer them. The art is in the fold: the dough is cut into rounds, filled, and gathered into a knot with as many pleats as your fingers can manage, the more the better. In this khinkali cooking class in Tbilisi the dough is prepared in advance so it can rest, and you concentrate on the filling, the shaping and the fold, making five dumplings of your own.

The chef then shows you how a Georgian eats a khinkali: hold it by the knot, bite a small hole, drink the broth, finish the dumpling and leave the knot on the plate.

Khachapuri in three regional styles

Khachapuri is the cheese bread that unites the country while each region insists its own version is the real one. Imeretian khachapuri, from the west-central region of Imereti, is a round flat bread with salted cheese sealed inside. Megrelian khachapuri, from Samegrelo near the Black Sea, is the same bread with a second layer of cheese melted on top. Adjarian khachapuri, from the coastal region around Batumi, is shaped like an open boat and finished with a raw egg yolk and a knob of butter stirred into the molten cheese at the table. Most cooking classes teach only one; here each pair of guests chooses a style, and in larger groups different pairs bake different versions so everyone tastes all three.

You work the dough, prepare the cheese mix, shape and fill the bread and watch it go into the oven. Baked khachapuri comes to the table hot, and this is usually the moment the whole room goes quiet.

Georgian cheeses, the salad and the table

The session opens with a plate of local cheeses, typically the stretchy sulguni of Samegrelo, the mild white Imeruli used in khachapuri and a smoked or aged variety, served with a salad of ripe Georgian tomatoes and cucumbers dressed with aromatic oil from Kakheti, the eastern region whose sunflower oil has a deep nutty flavour. A juice or lemonade is served to every guest, and the tarragon or pear lemonades of Georgia are an experience in themselves. While you eat, the chef explains the supra, the Georgian feast with its toasts and its rule that no guest leaves hungry.

The last part of the two and a half hours is the meal: the khinkali you folded, boiled and steaming, and the khachapuri you shaped, shared across the table. Additional dishes from the restaurant menu can be ordered separately if you are still hungry. Many guests say this Georgian cooking class was the best meal of their trip to Tbilisi, because they made it.