Kallithea is a multicultural place. Ukrainian, Arab, Indian, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and Greek refugees from Asia Minor and Pontic made the neighbourhood a wonderful food destination.
In this setting, Marios Vergiotis from Veria, his mother Pontia, and the Georgian cook Tamaz Kebatze opened Kartlis Guli, which in Greek means "The heart of Kartlis," and has been loved by Greeks and foreigners alike.
Georgian cuisine has dough at its core. Tonis Puri, which means baked bread, is unleavened, musk-scented bread like a baked pie and stuck to the walls of the typical vaulted oven called a tone.
Khinkali are huge dumplings filled with cheese served with sour cream or juicy and slightly hot minced meat, freshly ground black pepper, or potato served with melted butter.
Kartlis Guli's menu also has other delicacies. For example, it offers the famous khachapuri in seven versions: imeruli filled with the cow cheese of the same name, megruli with sulguni cow cheese - both kinds of cheese typical in the Caucasus countries and, of course, in Pontic cuisine - samepo that cheese aficionados will love since in addition to the cheese filling, it also has extra cheese on top like a pizza, the acharuli, which is essentially a peynirli with aromatic fresh butter and egg and also the special lobiani stuffed with red beans.
Of course, meat plays a serious role in the country's cuisine, both in roasts and, to a very large extent, in stews and casseroles. Their skewers are not marinated in vinegar like Russian shashliks but seasoned with unknown, exotic spices.
We got the mtsvadi and chicken souvlaki, which are incredibly juicy and golden brown and are a real treat. Of course, if you prefer pork, order the huge pork steak 600-700 grams.
A spectacular and delicious specialty, whole chickens are cut in half while remaining joined at the back, fried, and served with a white sauce containing cream, lots of garlic, and various aromatics.
Ojakhuri, which means family, is pork or chicken with onion, pomegranate, coriander, and potatoes, with a robust taste.
Since we talked about coriander, here is the holy trinity of spices in Georgian cuisine: pomegranate, walnut, coriander. Freshness, textures, and colours meet beautifully in the eggplant rolls that include all of the above in their filling.
In general, walnuts, which they have in abundance, also provide walnut oil, which, together with sunflower oil, is their main oil since there is no olive oil in the country.
The Georgian salad with onions, cucumber, and tomato is seasoned with grated walnut and parsley and is much more interesting than you might assume when you read the ingredients.
What is really special, however, is the Chacha, a high-grade spirit made from grapevines, a raki, for example, which can reach 50 and 60% in alcohol when distilled at home. So you drink a shot of chacha, and in return, you drink a glass of iced, fizzy-flavoured soft drink.
At Kartlis Guli, they brought me a peach-flavoured one at around 35% alcohol and, to accompany it, an iced, carbonated pear soda. Flawless.
Info: 101 Sapphos, Kallithea, tel. 21140842
Artemis Gitzi is a columnist for Cantina. Translated by Paul Antonopoulos.
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