Cafe Daphna Tbilisi / კაფე დაფნა თბილისი — Restaurant in Tbilisi

Multiple people have recommended this modern Georgian restaurant to me, and turns out they were right. I had a great dinning experience here.

Among its comprehensive menu, Cafe Daphna is most famous for its khinkalis. The best part of having khinkali here is that there is no minimum order (except for the molded cheese flavour). This means you can try multiple flavours, which an excellent bonus as a solo diner. In my 1-week experience in Tbilisi so far, Cafe Daphna is the only restaurant without a minimum order for Khinkali. For that alone, I would already recommend this place. But wait until you try their cheese & potato khinkali, and you’ll know why people are so passionate about it. This northern variety comes in a different shape than the regular kind: without a handle and you eat the whole thing. The wrap is much softer and glutinous, and the cheese and potato filling is so warm and gentle that would comfort any lonely traveller’s heart. This mountain variety is hands down my favourite khinkali so far! Other khinkalis I tried here are the mushroom, and pork & beef with herb khinkalis. They are good, but paled by the cheese & potato kind, and I’ve had better ones elsewhere.

Another impressive dish is the Georgian salad with hazelnut sauce and cheese crisps. Again, easily the best Georgian salad I’ve had. The parsley and onion really brightened up the dish, and the hazelnut sauce is not as heavy as the traditional walnut sauce. But the star of the show is the light-green coloured, thin-skinned Georgian cucumbers. From my food tour, I know that there are two types of cucumbers sold regularly at grocery stores. The dark green ones with thick chewy skin and a bitter taste; and the springy green ones with translucent skin and a sweeter taste. The latter ones cost three times more, but much tastier and crunchier. The cucumber in this Georgian salad is the latter kind. Normally, restaurants would choose to save costs and peel the dark green cukes, but not at Cafe Daphna. They served the real deal, and it makes a big difference.

The last dish I had was the mushroom stew. It’s too salty and the tarragon flavour is too OP. Wouldn’t recommend. For drink, I tried the Lagidze's Waters of tarragon flavour. It’s a green syrupy fizzy drink you see around the streets of Tbilisi. A tourist’s must-try, but full of artificial colour & flavours.

The restaurant’s interior is right, modern, and western, with vibey English songs playing in the background. Service is...

We came in this restaurant for the Khinkali , and we were not disappointed. All the food was really good, quite savory but good. Unfortunately i cannot say the same about the service!!! We arrive early , the restaurant was already half full , at the beginning all seemed great , the waiter was kind and spoke a good english , he suggested us the wine and the flavour of Kinkhali to try, but after he brought us the first dish he completely disappeared. Empty plates sated on the table for the whole meal, we asked for a dessert, some water and a soda to another waiter passing by but visibly annoyed by the situation. After 15 minutes someone came saying "sorry we dont have 2 of the three desserts on the menu". We asked only to have the drinks but we ended up never receiving it, even though we saw the barman call other waiters, showing the drinks and pointing our table. The drinks sated on the counter for 20 minutes , we decide to just cancel the order and leave. I dont know what happened , we saw our waiter coming back in the restaurant while paying and the woman letting us pay was not happy with him, but at the end as paying customer what i saw was not good. a waiter disappear, other waiters that didn't want to take orders on the side the disappeared waiter were managing , two cold bottles becoming hot after waiting on the counter , the barman visibly embarrassed by the situation that came taking some of the empty plates on our table. I mean food was great but the restaurantion is done by the service too not only food. Nobody asked how was the meal, only the waiter when we payed sayed sorry for the 2...

me and my wife went here, because the khinkali of this place is very hyped, this was the biggest mistake we have ever made. khinkali is in fact good, but not great its really overpriced you can get the same exact khinkali in a place nearby called “zodiaco” and the prices are way better there. starting from the service it was absolutely terrible, staff didn’t pay much attention to us, they didn’t take the dirty dishes for solid 20 minutes, even though they clearly saw it and we even asked them to. we ordered potatoes and salad, both of them were absolutely horrible, the salad tasted like pure oil it tasted like it was just laying in the kitchen for 30 minutes and the worst part they didn’t even use olive oil! it honestly felt cheap and low quality, the potatoes were burnt and tasted like straight coal, the ones on the bottom were so salty we could barely even eat them, so we asked for the “tkemali” and they brought it to us when we were almost finished, even thought we asked them about it multiple times and they mentioned it to each other as well. the atmosphere of the place is also awful, we thought it would be a cute quiet place for a nice date, but it was completely opposite it honestly felt like some kind of pub, with the awful seats for the couples, my back genuinely hurt so much from sitting on that awful chair that i couldn’t recover for hours. we also wanted a sweet treat maybe that would be good, BUT! there was not much of a choice. awful experience way overpriced and just low quality don’t recommend coming here, especially for couples, we are still recovering from...