Restaurant: Georgian Bakery and Cafe
Location: 11749 Bustleton Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19116. (215) 969-9900
Date: November 21, 2018
Cuisine: Georgian
Rating: Like bland Afghan
It’s tradition on the day before ThanksGavin, for us Gavins to go somewhere ethnic.
For the last 2-3 years we’ve been going to an Uzbek place but this year it was slightly shifted to a nearby Georgian place — oddly located next to the home depot.
Here’s the restaurant itself in what was clearly intended as a big box store space.
Inside is oddly sterile too. But we have a huge table to ourselves. There was one other large party but otherwise empty.
Some Prosecco to start.
Salad. Like a Greek salad.
Slightly different salad — with more garlic.
Eggplant paste toast — excellent.
Eggplant salad. Roasted.
Bread.
Boring “spicy” sauce. Wasn’t really spicy.
From my cellar: 1995 Robert Ampeau & Fils Meursault 1er Cru Les Perrières. Great bottle, fully mature.
Weird sweet pomegranate juice or something. Very sweet and bland.
Fried chicken. Pressed flat.
Egg bread. Fried egg inside what is pretty much a pizza bread. Pretty good, if very mild.
Cheese bread. Sort of like a cheese pizza with no sauce. Bland but tasty.
2014 Domaine Dujac Morey St. Denis 1er Cru Les Chaffots. 92 points. Bit of reduction. Pure, clean red fruit.
Georgian dumplings. Giant with thick skins. The meat inside was pretty good and these are clearly related to Chinese boiled dumplings. So heavy though! And badly badly need soy sauce, vinegar, and chili paste.
From my cellar: 1977 Badia a Coltibuono Chianti Classico Riserva. Mature, earthy, a touch sour.
Kabobs of the pork, veal, beef, and chicken variety.
Sturgeon. Ick. Reeked and tasted like seared heavy fish oil. I needed tongue therapy after this.
Peanut crunchy cake. This was dry but pretty good.
We had a fun night and service was diligent — although there was an odd very long (45 min?) gap between the dumplings and kabobs.
But the food, while well prepared, was quite bland. The Uzbek place we have gone to several times was tastier and a bit more varied — and Afghan food, which is very similar, has about 10X the flavor. Georgian seems to be like carbs, cheese, and fairly bland meat and mixed up with no seasonings.