Tbilisi-bound

One advantage of living in Chicago is the proximity to Devon Avenue, north of downtown. Devon is a neighborhood crammed with ethnic groceries, restaurants, butcheries, bakeries, clothing stores, etc etc. Even though I've been living in Chicago for nearly three years, I made my first trip to Devon Avenue on a recent sunny Saturday afternoon.

This particular trip was inspired by the need for halal meat for a dinner party at a Georgian friend's apartment. In addition to several halal butcheries, Devon has a wonderful Georgian/Russian bakery, where we bought hinkali. Hinkali are delicious Georgian dumplings with meats, herbs, and a little soup in them - meant to be eaten with freshly cracked black pepper and lots of slurping.

In addition to hinkali, my Georgian friend made a lamb stew and a fried eggplant salad, which turned out to be the most delicious dish of the night. This salad was composed of fried strips of eggplant, pomegranate seeds, and a thick paste of ground walnuts, parsley, onions, and raw garlic. A Pakistani friend who joined us for dinner laughed at me when I said that the raw garlic gave the salad heat - apparently I wouldn't be able to handle the heat of Pakistani food. I'll take her word for it.

My addition to dinner was freshly baked khachapuri, a decadent cheesy, buttery bread which turns up everywhere in Georgia. Though it wasn't as good as I remember having it in a Georgian restaurant, it was still a welcome addition to our meal.

In sum, this taste of Georgian food has me wanting to make Tbilisi my new home, at least for as long as it takes to learn to make a proper khachapuri.