Chito Gvrito NYC — Restaurant in New York

The worst restaurant experience of my lifetime. I made a reservation 2 or 3 days in advance for 4 people. Despite the reservation, they failed to have a table for us. We spent over 30 minutes there, asking them to solve the issue somehow. Instead, the staff focused all their efforts on giving excuses and trying to convince us it's actually our fault! So please do yourself a favor and stay away from this place. I should also mention this place has zero Georgian authenticity. I've been to Georgia - the country in the Caucasus region. Georgia has a lot of history, terrific food, and unique culture. Georgian hospitality is legendary. Unfortunately, this restaurant has none of that. Just another NYC diner run by incompetent arrogant people.

November 18, 2021 update to the owner response: OK, you see, this is a problem with you guys. You keep insisting you're right and I'm wrong. Every word in your response is a lie. Here's why: I reserved "Private dining" through Resy, which I believed was an INDOOR table. It turned out, all your tables in Resy are outdoor seating! It's your fault you don't make it clear in the app. As we found out the hard way, "Outdoor" and "Private dining" are both outdoor! I'm sorry, but a dark cold shed on the street is NOT "Private dining". And you are NOT a Georgian restaurant, you're a joke. "The balance of my party" arrived right on time at 6:30pm, which was precisely my reservation time. It was me who arrived early. So nobody was late. A lie! Extortion? For $4 per person? LOL, you are a really cheap place! In any case, that's another lie. Chef came upstairs??? I didn't see any chef. One more lie.

Bottom line: for those who crave Georgian food, there's a higher chance of getting it in Burger King than at your "restaurant". For customer service, try any gas station convenience store - a much more pleasant experience than...

I had high hopes for this restaurant, but unfortunately they fell very short.

We came for the 3-course $45 restaurant week dinner deal, and while I felt like the quantity of food was decent, the quality of the food just didn’t hit right with me.

For apps, we split the adjaruli khachapuri and meat khinkali. Honestly, the khachapuri was the best part of the meal; prepared tableside and it tasted really lovely. The khinkali on the other hand…maybe I just had different expectations of what this was going to be, but it was 90% thick dough and 10% meat filling, which was insanely spice-heavy. Didn’t love it at all.

For mains, we split the pork mtsvadi and the mushroom and potato ojakhuri. I find that pork is difficult to perfect in general, and this one was just too dry. The ojakhuri was a great concept, but unfortunately this one was so salty that we couldn’t even finish it. Otherwise I would have loved it. The flavors were good, but the salt ended up over-powering everything.

For dessert, we split the ideali cake and the drunken almond cake. The ideali cake was the second favorite part of my meal, I absolutely loved the flavor and the presentation. Slightly dry, but I could look past that. The almond cake….it really was drunken. A bit too much perhaps. The sauce tasted too boozy, which I understand was the point but I didn’t expect straight up alcohol. The cake itself was good so I just tried to avoid the sauce but to no avail.

Also, the space is tiny and there are so many people packed inside constantly, that they kept bumping the back of my friend’s chair. Obviously not the restaurant’s fault, but I felt bad for her. Could barely hear her with how loud it was too.

Overall, I came in with high expectations based on the hype I had been hearing and previous reviews, so it was disappointing to have had this experience. Oh...

FOOD ALLERGY WARNING I went here last night for a celebration dinner with my two friends. While ordering I let our waitress know about my severe nut allergies and checked that each item I ordered didn’t have nuts in them. When the bread starter with two spreads came out, which is included in the restaurant week menu, I tried the“chickpea spread” and instantly felt something was wrong. I asked our same waitress if the spread had nuts and she nonchalantly said “yes, walnuts.” Meanwhile a separate waiter who was there said no it doesn’t but I’ll check, and came back saying that “oh wait, it did have walnuts”.

Long story short I spent almost 5 hours in the ER last night trying to bring down my anaphylactic reaction. Luckily, I had my friends who helped me find my EpiPen and Benadryl so I could slow down the closing of my throat.

I urge the restaurant to better train the workers there. They all looked confused while I was injecting myself with my EpiPen and trying to figure out what hospital to go to. They gave me the address of an urgent care that was closed. I then had to take a cab to Beth Israel Hospital. Also, I must note that the restaurant had symbols to indicate if an item was gluten free or vegan but nothing to alert people of which items definitely have nuts in them.

I’m lucky that even though I have severe reactions, they were not life threatening. But this incident makes me incredibly concerned for people who have worse allergic conditions because I think with the reaction times of the staff, someone in a worse situation would have likely died. It is so important to make sure anyone in the food industry realizes just how terrifying food...