All activities / Culinary / Cooking / Tbilisi
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Culinary / Cooking in Tbilisi
Georgia's capital, a layered city of Orthodox churches, wine bars, and Soviet modernist blocks on the Mtkvari River. The base for Caucasus motorcycle and overland circuits running north to Kazbegi and west to the Black Sea.
Why here
Georgian food culture is built around the supra, the feast governed by a tamada toastmaster whose toasts are the actual agenda, and Tbilisi teaches it hands-on: khinkali-twisting and khachapuri classes end at a supra table with the eight-thousand-year wine tradition poured alongside. The food-walk end of the scale runs from market-to-table old-town tours led by food journalists and chefs to full-day Silk Road feasts through the Dezerter Bazaar's herb and cheese rows. Georgian cuisine is having its global moment, and eating it at the source, walnut sauces, fresh coriander, amber wine, is the version the export copies can't match.
Best months
Year-round; September and October add market harvest depth. Classes and tours book a couple of days ahead in summer. Come very hungry, the supra does not negotiate.
Getting there & around
Everything meets centrally in the old town or at the markets. Pair with a Kakheti day trip for the vineyard end of the same story.
Skill levels: beginner
Schools & guides (2)
Culinary Backstreets
GuideCulinary Backstreets, the multi-city food-journalism and tour company, runs its Tbilisi Silk Road Feast over seven hours and nine to twelve stops through the Old Town and Sololaki, led by food journalists, chefs and neighborhood residents. Tastings run from khinkali and tone-oven shoti to shkhmeruli, churchkhela and natural kvevri wines, ending with a traditional feast. Tours run Monday to Saturday from 10:00, capped at seven guests, at 125 dollars per adult including food and drink.
Taste Georgia
GuideTaste Georgia runs market walks and cooking classes in Tbilisi, full-day Kakheti wine tours and a three-day Georgian wine immersion, built on a stated value of slow travel and support for women-owned businesses. It is led by co-founder and sommelier Sarah May Grunwald, wine-industry co-founder Irakli Cholobargia, and Tbilisi co-owner Natia Khidasheli, a sommelier who works in Georgian, English, Russian and Hebrew. Day trips also reach Kazbegi and the Uplistsikhe cave city.
Also good for culinary / cooking in September:
Torn between Tbilisi and Shanagarry for September?
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