Khinkali Collection — Restaurant in Tbilisi

We, female 29 and male 32, give 3 stars. One of them is a solidarity star. We visited in the evening. We are at home in the khinkali world ;-)

Restaurant: The ambiance is okay. Nothing special. The room was a bit too warm. Unfortunately, there is no outdoor area. There was no paper in the restroom. The English is okay, as is the Russian.

Service: Good and prompt. The food is served in stages, which is a pity. Friendly staff, provides guidance and is honest. That’s where the fourth solidarity star comes from: the color of the khinkali is food coloring. This was immediately confirmed upon inquiry. Honesty is important. Wine recommendations are given.

Menu: The menu is very large. We focused on the khinkali. In short: not particularly refined in taste or composition. It’s a typical one-way Instagram menu. What stands out: the dough tastes the same in all variants, not seasoned, and mostly just colored with food coloring.

Khinkali: We had fried lamb, spinach, shrimp, chocolate, and beans. All the khinkali have no liquid inside, just dough and filling. The liquid is apparently not gained through sweating of the contents, meaning, for example, the spinach is placed fresh in the dough casing. Here’s our tip: marinate the spinach, heavily season it (at least with some salt & pepper), and freeze it with liquid. Then cook this spinach cube with the dough casing. This way, the liquid remains. Otherwise, it’s just dough with filling. Fried lamb tastes only of oil. Horrible. Spinach is weakly seasoned and in a dough casing that differs in color from the spinach. Beans are interestingly spicy. Shrimp are also seasoned. Chocolate is outrageous. Chocolate means industrial Nutella-cream. The dough is black but tasteless (tip: use vanilla, cinnamon, or cardamom in the dough). Each khinkali comes with a dip, which is bland and industrial.

Conclusion: Taste-wise, two stars. No culinary finesse, visually minimalistic, good wine selection. Service is very honest and open, hence the solidarity star. But this has nothing to do with traditional khinkali. It’s something for Instagram and then...

It was surprising to have such a bad experience at a restaurant with such good reviews. The food wasn’t good, mid at best, and the air-conditioning was awful-there was barely any air to breathe, which made the long wait even more unbearable. When we asked to move to a spot with better airflow, the waiter told us to wait, saying it would take him 20 minutes to clean a table for three. After a long wait, we asked again, only to be told we couldn’t change our table. We waited 2 hours for our food, which was wild considering how small and simple our order was. They didn’t even bring us water for about an hour. We had tried to book a table by phone but were told they couldn’t take reservations-yet at the end, the waiter told us the experience would’ve been better if we had pre-booked. The biggest issue was that they simply didn’t care. We watched waiters dry plates for 20 minutes while at least three tables sat empty and dirty, with no one making the slightest effort to clean them or seat waiting guests. We had to get up and go to the waiters almost every time we needed something, even to pay,because waiting at the table felt hopeless. Overall, we were really disappointed-the entire service gave the strong impression that they just didn’t...

The food was very ok and served in a reasonable time, around 45-50 min after we ordered. And that was the only thing that was ok with the place. Service was awful, we were served by the lady who apparently was not welcoming at all. On the top of the grumpy face she wore she brought the drinks (home made wine) after 30 minutes. On the kind reminder to bring the drinks she explained that they didn't have spare glasses. That was strange. The tables around were not occupied but not cleaned after guests left and but at the same time the crowd was waiting outside but also inside. One could not feel comfortable while seeing kids in waiting line staying and waiting for a table while the hosts weren't that much interested to prepare the tables for them. At some point they started to invite people from different groups to sit together at a table, that was at least a solution for the crowd. So overall atmosphere wasn't that pleasant, I would suggest the management take an...