Georgian Food I Love You

We got up this morning with a sense of real determination.  The idea that somewhere, out there, a really delicious restaurant was managed to elude us become some sort of challenge.  I know we can’t speak the language and I know we can’t read anything in Russia, but surely two people with smartphones in 2015 could figure this out, right?

Our big idea was to take a morning stroll before the day heated up, and see if we could find the restaurant location ourselves.  According to their website there were three restaurants in the mini-chain, and we could already eliminate one of them since we tried to visit it the previous evening.  So we picked the next closest restaurant, which wasn’t all that far, actually.  It was roughly a 30 minute walk north from our hotel, actually near Cafe Pushkin – a restaurant that we had already visited and enjoyed.

As it turned out, we were able to confirm the location of the restaurant.  Multiple signs, menu on the door, and so we were confident we could call later and get some reservations.  Since we were already out and about and looking for coffee and breakfast we decided to go ahead and go back to Cafe Pushkin since they are open 24 hours.  Breakfast was very nice – Kuniko had a fried quail eggs and cheese on toast, and I experimented with homemade curds with cream.  It was my first time to try curds (other than cottage cream) and it was a little bland for my taste.  Maybe I should have gotten some jam or jelly for the top?  Also worth mentioning was the interesting toilet area underneath Cafe Pushkin.  The whole building is quite historic, so when we walked down the marble staircase to the basement we could also see the historic bathroom.  There was a coat area, with an old lady manning the reception, and the dark bathroom had toilets and sinks painted with designs – it was really unusual (for a toilet).

After breakfast we had cappucinos that came with two pieces of chocolate and a good dash of cinnamon, and then we walked back to the hotel.  We had left the “Do Not Disturb” indicator on our room, so we just walked back to flip it to “Clean Up”, and we left to go see the Novodevichy Convent, a Russian Orthodox church.  It was a six-station metro ride, and then we emerged in a more rural area of Moscow.

The whole reason I wanted to see this place was way back in Amazing Race season 9, when the teams stopped by while getting a clue. I remember being so impressed with the interior, and wanting to see it for myself some day.  Because of all the road construction, it was not immediately clear where the entrance to the Convent was.  We accidentally entered a huge cemetery adjacent to the Convent, and spent quite a few minutes looking for some kind of passageway between the two.  We never found the passageway, but we did find lots of interesting and elaborate headstones there.

Finally we left the cemetery completely and found the entrance on the other side.  We paid at the door, and then went inside the Convent and made our way to the Smolensk cathedral.  We arrived just at 10 am, and apparently it was break time for the workers that were restoring the outer walls of the Convent complex.  Hundreds of workers streamed past us to go outside and rest for a bit, and so by the time we made it to the Cathedral it was very quiet inside.

As I expected, the interior was more beautiful than what I saw on the TV show.  There were only a few people inside, and we sat and enjoyed the beauty of the building in peace and quiet.  It was interesting to think that just by watching an episode of a TV show had led me to this place and time.  Thanks, Amazing Race!

We spent a little time walking through some of the other buildings in the complex – one was more like a regular church, and it was clear that they actually conduct most of their ceremonies here.  They even had a small underground gift shop with lots of goods that were apparently blessed for a profit.  Nice!

Back at the metro station we bought some tickets for our next destination.  While buying them a homeless-looking guy tried to get us to buy his old ticket.  He assured us (in Russian) that it still had three rides left on it, but I had some doubts and we went with the machine tickets.  He just shook his head and walked away.

Our next activity was to hit some of the more interesting stations of the Moscow Metro.  I had heard that the architecture and design of the metro was something to see, and so I had done some research on which stations might be worth visiting.  You can ride the metro anywhere you like on one ticket as long as you don’t leave the station, so this was a cheap and easy way to see a lot of different stuff, all underground.

We stopped at six or seven different stations.  Since we couldn’t read the station names, I had an application on my phone that did the translating, and we were able to find them all.  Most were on kind of a big loop line running in the center of Moscow, so they were almost in sequence.  Also helpful was that the trains ran every 3-4 minutes, so even if we screwed up and got off at the wrong station we could wait a few minutes and try again.

According to the websites that I read, the stations of the Moscow metro were grand in scale and design because it was thought that should it be necessary, they would be used to house Russian citizens in a time of crisis.  These stations were made as symbols of the “government of the people” taking care of the people themselves.  This meant that most stations had very classical architecture – tilework, stained glass, marble and bronze statues.  They weren’t ostentatious, and they were a big contrast to the purely functional stations of Japan.

After stopping and photographing five or six stations we were starting to get a little tired out, so we ended our Metro journey at Red Square, and popped out of the station right next to the outdoor beer restaurant that we tried on our first evening.  Unfortunately they were closed even after the posted opening time of noon, so we switched to a back street near our hotel, and walked into a very stylish restaurant that we had seen earlier.  It turned out to be a Georgian restaurant (which was the same kind of restaurant as Khachapuri, where we were planning to go for dinner), but since we couldn’t read anything how would we know? We had a couple glasses of Georgian white wine (meh), a some light snacks: cheesy flatbread, and a cold creamy (walnut-based) satsivi with chunks of chicken inside.  Both were really good, and we switched to prosecco after the wine to celebrate the good food.

On our way back to our hotel room we asked our hotel concierge to call and make reservations at Khachapuri, and we confirmed the correct phone number and location with him before he called.  He made the call, made the reservations, and we were set!  The rest of the afternoon was spent in the sauna and pool splashing around.

Finally dinner time rolled around, and since we knew exactly where we were going it was an easy trip to the restaurant.  They had our reservations, they sat us down at our table, and the menu was the right menu.  Hooray!  I liked the atmosphere of the place – casual but lively, and halfway through our dinner a guy came up and started playing piano.

I had never had Georgian food, but it is an interesting combination of Turkish and eastern European food – with lots of spices and fruits, and pretty good wine, too.  That night we had a fried cheese pastry just oozing with Georgian cheese, a coriander and onion khachapuri flatbread, young duck in cherry sauce, fried mushrooms and herbs, and an appetizer of grilled eggplant wrapped around a nut/cheese paste with chili peppers on top.  Holy crap it was good!  This is one of these times in life when the wait was worth it.  Kuniko drank Georgian beer but I was drinking lots of Georgian wine.  The two different reds that I had were much better than I expected.  We weren’t really impressed with the Turkish wines that we had during our visit to Istanbul, but these were much more drinkable and reasonably priced.

Our server wasn’t really good at using English, but he was patient with us and kept smiling.  Since the next night was our last night in Moscow, we were hoping to eat at a place that we really liked.  We decided then and there to go ahead and make reservations to come back the next night, too.  The server took our reservations and then we checked out of there.  Wow, what a great meal!

On the return trip to the hotel we stopped at a convenience store for some ice cream to eat while we walked.  I managed to go through the whole transaction speaking only Russian, and I don’t think the staff even noticed (or cared) that I wasn’t from around there.  That was a good feeling – we’re starting to get used to things.

Near Red Square preparations were almost complete for a jam festival.  All week during our stay we saw the preparations underway, but according to the internet this big jam and preserves festival was scheduled to begin the next day.  They had giant animals made entirely with fruit on display, and they had built a temporary skating rink (for rollerblades) as well for live performances.  We looked around at all the stuff they were building, walked through a two story underground shopping mall that we had completely missed every time we walked by during our stay so far, and then finally we sat on a bench in the cool night air and did some people-watching.

After the great dinner we went back to our room, polished off the vodka and hit the sack.