Half an hour after leaving Tbilisi on Holloway Road the tasty flavours of dinner are still rolling around my mouth. Even if I wanted them to disappear, which I certainly don't, I feel sure there would be no way of doing so for the taste imprint has run deep. B recommended Tbilisi and it was sold on the grounds of its tastiness and boy does it deliver. This is the kind of meal where photos are more or less useless, so it's not such a bad thing that my photos are, well, more or less useless. Photos, after all, tell you nothing about flavours and one of the great things about this place is how immensely strong and appealing are the flavours.
We began with a selection of starters that included a bean dip (full set of ingredients not yet divined) a very buttery Russian salad (and the butteriness was all to the good), some hot, bean-filled bread and the most luscious, hot, salty-white-cheese filled bread. The last item was without doubt one of the best things I've eaten since starting this blog: so good that I actually paced myself with it, whereas if it had just been excellent, I would have been the wolf... For mains b and me had a vegetable plate that included more Russian salad, aubergine with tomatoes, a mixed salad, rice with sweetcorn and spinach with walnuts (good spot number 7). The final dish was also in my best few things eaten this year: creamy, rich, deep and long in flavour.
We drank a bottle of Georgian house red which was very good and suited the food really well, and a request for tap water elicited a very attractive, large jug, which is just the kind of service you want. I'd recommend booking because we were very lucky to get a table as a walk-in on a Thursday night and I feel sure that it must be lots of people's "secret restaurant". One last thing that I admired was the spacing of the tables, which was generous and allowed you to have your own little world in the restaurant, which is not a feeling that you get at an awful lot of much smarter, pricier places (this was £20 a head).
Did I say that I liked it yet?
1 comment:
if the photos don't do it justice, it must be amazing. because the photos (and descriptions) were mouth-watering in themselves. esp the cheesy bread. A must for when K returns to Londinium. kns
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