Saqartvelo is the Georgian restaurant of our dreams.
It’s Georgian-owned and Georgian-staffed, pointed proudly at Georgian diners and anyone else with Georgia on the mind. Even its name translates, forthrightly, to Georgia.
Three months old, the restaurant is set up with a charming Georgian cottage aesthetic within the confines of a typical Van Nuys strip mall, adjacent to a 7-11 at the corner of Van Owen Street and Sepulveda Boulevard.
Fuzzy papakha hats and dolls in folkloric dress share space on the walls. Bulbous salt-and-pepper shakers shaped like khinkali dumplings adorn tables draped in bucolic vinyl below a clock shaped like the country itself. While Niaz Diasamidze croons darkly overhead like the Georgian spawn of Nick Cave and Leornard Cohen.
Place your order with co-owner Katevan Undulashvili, and baker Nini Qutidze will get right down to business, snatching one of the large, freshly made blobs of dough resting within her reach.
With deft fingers and pins, both smooth and knobbly, she rolls and shapes them into different forms, braiding and stretching their seams, and folding in the secret four cheese blend she uses to recall the hallmarks of a great salgumi, the briny, soft cheese used in Georgia’s most famous export: Khachapuri.
In L.A., as in much of the world, Adjaruli khachapuri (adja) rules, from real Georgian restaurants to a number of Armenian and Turkish restaurants that have adopted the dish. You likely know it when you see it: a cheese-filled, butter-slicked bread boat, twisted at the ends into sort of a Cyrillic “F” (Ф) and cradling a raw egg yolk at its center.
However, this style, representing the Black Sea-skirting region of Adjara, is merely the most dominant form of khachapuri, of which there are at least 50 variations, according to some counts. These are made in a near-infinite assortment of shapes, recipes, and styles, the most prominent of which are named for the areas they originated in.
Saqartvelo offers three styles of khachapuri, all made from scratch by Qutidze, who learned to bake at the side of her chef mother at age eleven, before working in restaurants back home and moving to L.A. three years ago. When Undulashvili and her business partner decided to open a place dedicated to Georgian food, she asked her skilled friend, Qutidze, to join them.
Saqartvelo’s khachapuri are crafted from leavened dough, made within minutes, and emerge from the ovens within a few more. Served piping hot, they bear all the notes of great rustic bread, with sun-spotted surfaces and a clear commitment to craft that L.A. rarely sees in this famous dish.
“Great khachapuri comes from feelings,” Qutidze tells L.A. TACO. “When I have good feelings, my khachapuri is always best. Not good. Best. When I’m not feeling good, I say, ‘Kate, I don’t know how I made this.’ When I feel good, I make everything, like, amazing.”
“Like today,” she laughs.
And she’s not wrong. I tucked into all four of the restaurant’s incredible bread-based dishes to confirm Nini was on fire that day.
First I had Imeruli khachapuri, which comes from the central, historic capital of Imereti. It is the most popular style within Georgia, as well as one of the simplest-looking, landing on my table in a big wheel of thin-skinned, butter-slicked dough that breaks easily into a morass of salty cheese, which melts a little while still retaining downy white curds that have the softness of a farm-made cottage cheese.
The restaurant offers both a large and small version. Qutidze subtly informed me that Georgians eat it with the hands, no knife and fork, and helping us to avoid pulling a “De Blasio.”
Next came a giant, plaited crescent of Guiran khachapuri from Nini’s Southwestern coastal home of Guria. This was our favorite of the khachapuri we tried at Saqartvelo, its dough bursting with soft white cheese and slender slices of full-flavored, hard-boiled egg, providing a different take on the raw egg-strapped Adjaruli style we’re used to.
Nini then prepared her take on Adjaruli khachapuri, which stands head-and-shoulders above its L.A. competitors. Removing it from the oven, she stuck a beam of butter onto its face and ladled a single raw egg yolk on top with a plastic cup, instructing us to tear one of the pastry’s ends off to dip into the khachipuri’s hull and mix it all up.
From within its base of tender, freshly baked bread, the molten cheese stretched sort of like a mozzarella, leaving silky white curds to mingle with the butter and egg below in a hot, decadent experience that blows any chain-anchored bread bowl way off of the planet.
To finish the meal off, I tried lobiani, a dish of flaky flatbread stuffed with pinto beans and a strong dose of black pepper that is also listed under the restaurant’s dough-based dish section. Divisible into eighth giant slices, you could eat for days off a single order.
It was around that point that I realized how vegetarian-friendly the restaurant is, with a number of meat-free dishes that include ground walnut-based pkhali made with options like beets and eggplant, as well as salads, the cracked corn porridge known as ghomi, chakhokhbili tomato soup, and bean-based lobio stew made with garlic and cilantro.
At the register, one can also buy jars of pickled vegetables, fruit preserves, spices, and the spicy sauce adjika, while a nearby fridge has bottled fruit compotes to drink with one’s meal.
Georgia is famous for its hospitality and celebrations with near-incessant toasts, as much as it is for the singular recipes that broke beyond its borders to stand out among cuisines of the former Soviet states.
Undulashvili and Qutidze insisted that L.A. TACO return soon for the minced meat khinkali kalikiru dumplings, barberry-laced kebab plate, and butterflied chicken tabaka that requires 25 minutes to prepare, concerned I was missing out on the full picture of their culinary excellence.
The team is clearly very proud of Georgia, no less of this citadel of true Georgian food and culture they’ve established in Los Angeles.
“We have a different taste and an amazing tradition,” Qutidze says. “No one knows Georgian food, so we offer some special things here. We are all Georgian here, we know what makes real khachapuri and real lobiani, and we offer only homemade recipes. We want to introduce these things to everyone.”
Saqartvelo Georgian Cuisine ~ 15317 Vanowen St. Los Angeles, CA 91405
