Just the sight of Khachapuri would make a Cardiologist cringe. White bread shaped like a canoe, covered with a ridiculous amount of cheese and topped with a pad of butter and a raw egg. My arteries are closing just thinking about it. This picture isn’t ours, our arteries couldn’t take it again and we didn’t have our camera the first time.
Sitting in a restaurant in Tbilisi, everyone around us had what looked like cheesy pizza on their table. We couldn’t see exactly what it was, but from the pictures on the wall, depicting the size options and the fact it was on nearly every table, we figured it was the house specialty. Somehow we failed to realize it came with a raw egg on top, so when the Khachapuri was put in front of us my eyes opened wide in disbelief. We didn’t eat raw meat in Ethiopia and I wasn’t going to chance a raw egg in Georgia, so we did the best we could trying to extract it from the cheesy, buttery mess.
Now before you get totally grossed out, this is only one kind of Khachapuri, Ajarian. It can also come filled with beans, meat or vegetables and lacking the raw egg.
Our Khachapuri was deliciously cheesy, but I felt like a 13 year old girl afterwards my face was so covered in grease. Interestingly enough, this dish is so popular across the country that the price of Khachapuri across the country is apparently used by Tbilisi State University’s Economics Department as a measure of inflation! http://www.iset.ge/index.php?article_id=215&clang=0
Oh, I LOVE Khachapuri. Pure comfort food. We ate it so much during our travels through Georgia, although I have to admit I always avoided the raw egg version. While I liked the ones stuffed with beans, my favorite is still the cheesy one. Greasy, but you’re happy.
@ Audrey- you can’t really go wrong with bread and cheese 馃檪 I wish we had avoided the raw egg one, it was a surprise when it showed up the first time!
I can’t wait to hear how you break fast! Shana Tovah!