Georgian Street Food: What to Eat and What It Costs

Bakery khachapuri

3-8 GEL

Khinkali, per piece

1.50-3 GEL

Churchkhela

3-8 GEL

Dezerter Bazaar

07:00-17:00

Georgia has no food-truck culture and does not need one. The street food is the bakery window, the market stall and the grill by the road, and it is the same food the country has eaten for centuries, sold for pocket change to people on their way somewhere. This guide is the standing-up half of our what to eat in Georgia overview: no restaurants (the Tbilisi restaurants guide has those), just the things you buy through a hatch and eat on a bench, with prices checked in September 2026.

Bread from the tone

Everything starts with the tone, the round clay oven set into a bakery floor. The baker leans in, slaps a length of dough onto the hot inner wall, and lifts it off minutes later with a hook: that is shotis puri, the long canoe-shaped loaf with the charred underside, and tonis puri, its flatter round cousin. Both are flour, water, salt and yeast, and both are the best bread you will eat in the country when they are still too hot to hold. Look for the glow of the oven through a basement window, or a queue of people carrying loaves wrapped in paper; almost every block in Tbilisi has one. Point, say erti puri (one bread), and hand over coins. Mchadi is the western cornbread, dense and made from corn alone, sold to eat with lobio and cheese; nazuki is the sweet, spiced bread sold from roadside stands around Surami on the highway west. Bread does not keep: eat it the day you buy it, ideally within the hour.

Khachapuri from the window

The cheese bread is the national dish, on the intangible heritage list since 22 January 2019, and the bakery window is where Georgians buy it. Three kinds are street food. Imeruli is the round flat one filled with salted white Imeretian cheese, the everyday khachapuri, stacked in every window and eaten like a sandwich. Penovani, from Samtskhe-Javakheti, is cheese folded into puff pastry, square, flaky and the breakfast of half the city. Megruli, from Samegrelo, is the Imeruli with more cheese melted on top. The Adjaruli boat with the egg yolk and butter is a sit-down dish because it has to be eaten the minute it lands, though some bakeries do them; a bakery Adjaruli is at the top of the 3 to 8 GEL window range and a restaurant one is about 20 GEL. Eat a khachapuri hot, when the cheese pulls; at room temperature it is a different, denser thing. Our khachapuri guide covers every regional type.

Lobiani and kubdari

Lobiani is the khachapuri dough filled with seasoned kidney beans instead of cheese: cheaper, heavier and, for many Georgians, better. It is the food of Barbaroba, Saint Barbara's day on 17 December, when every family bakes it, and it is in the windows all year at the same 3 to 8 GEL; the Racha version has smoked lori ham worked into the beans. Kubdari is the Svan bread, leavened dough sealed around chunks of spiced lamb, kid or pork so that the meat half steams inside; it went onto the national heritage list in 2015, and the real thing is made in Mestia and Ushguli. Tbilisi bakeries sell their own versions, and a delivery bakery like Bakerline lists six kubdari at 28 GEL and a whole lobiani cut in eight at 16 GEL, which tells you the price per piece.

The grill

Follow the smoke. Mtsvadi is cubes of pork, veal or lamb on long flat skewers over embers, sold at roadside grills on every highway, outside markets and at weekend picnic spots, and served with raw onion and pomegranate seeds on a sheet of bread that soaks up the fat. Kupati is the Georgian sausage, coarsely ground pork with pepper and onion in a natural casing, grilled until it splits; it comes from Samegrelo and Guria and is sold from the same grills. Eat both hot off the grill, never from a tray that has been waiting, and lean forward when you bite the kupati. The price varies with the place and the meat, and a grill by a picnic spot in the hills charges less than one on the Batumi seafront. Ask for the price per skewer before ordering. Chicken tabaka, the flattened fried chicken with ajika, turns up at the bigger roadside stops.

Khinkali counters

Khinkali, the twisted dumplings of coarsely chopped meat and broth from the eastern mountains, are a sit-down dish that Georgia has turned into fast food. Several Tbilisi kitchens do nothing else: you order a number, never fewer than five of one filling, eat them at a counter or a bare table and leave inside twenty minutes. The kalakuri city filling is mixed meat with coriander and parsley; the mountain khevsuruli is meat, onion, chili, salt and cumin without the herbs; potato, mushroom and cheese fillings are everywhere. A khinkali is 1.50 to 3 GEL a piece in 2026, the vegetarian fillings at the bottom of the range. Hold it by the knob, bite the side, drink the broth, eat the rest and leave the knob on the plate. Cafe Daphna on Atoneli Street is open through the night at weekends, Klike's on Chitadze Street has seven fillings, and Pasanauri on the Military Highway is the town the rest of the country stops in for them. Our khinkali guide has the rest.

Sweets from the market

Churchkhela is the candle-shaped thing hanging on strings at every market and roadside stand: walnuts or hazelnuts threaded on a string, dipped again and again in tatara, grape must thickened with flour, and hung to dry. The Kakhetian way of making it went onto the national heritage list in 2015. It is made after the harvest and sold all year, and the difference between a fresh Kakheti one and a stale souvenir-stall one is the difference between a good fig roll and a rubber band: press it, and buy it only if it bends. Expect 3 to 8 GEL a string at a market or on the Kakheti roads. Pelamushi is the same thickened grape juice set as a jelly and served with nuts, an autumn dish sold by the portion at markets and bakeries. Gozinaki is walnuts caramelised in honey and cut into diamonds, the New Year sweet, sold year-round. Tklapi is fruit leather, sheets of dried plum or cherry-plum puree from Samtskhe-Javakheti, sold rolled at the spice stalls; it goes into kharcho as a souring agent and into school bags as a snack. In season, the fruit itself is the sweet: figs in August, grapes and pomegranates in October, persimmons in November, sold by the kilo at every market.

Drinks

Limonati is the national soft drink and has little to do with lemons: it is sweet, carbonated and flavoured, and the one to try is tarkhuna, tarragon, bright green and herbal. Pear and cream soda are the other classics, in every kiosk fridge and often on draught at canteens. Kompot is stewed fruit in its own juice, cherry or peach, served cold from a jug in canteens and homes. Fresh pomegranate juice is pressed at market stalls from October, when the fruit comes in, and is the best thing on this page for the price of a coffee. Mineral water is a habit rather than a treat: Borjomi is the salty, sharply carbonated one, Nabeghlavi the other name on every shelf. Wine by the glass from a market vendor's barrel exists and is a lottery; for the good stuff, the wine bars pour from 6 GEL a glass, and the Atoneli Street wine window hands one through a hatch for 8.

Where to find it

Our markets guide covers the Dezerter Bazaar, the Dry Bridge and Bazari Orbeliani with hours and prices, and the Old Town walk passes the bakeries worth stopping at on the way.

What it costs

At the National Bank's rate on 29 September 2026 (2.61 GEL to the dollar), 5 GEL is about $2. Grilled meat, lemonade, juice and the market sweets are priced by the stall and the season, so we have not put numbers on them; ask before you order and expect a skewer to cost more than a khachapuri and less than a restaurant main.

Vegetarian and vegan

Half of this page is meat-free by tradition, because the Orthodox fasting calendar (no meat, dairy or eggs on Wednesdays, Fridays and through the four long fasts) has kept the bean and vegetable dishes in weekly rotation. Bread, lobiani, mchadi, churchkhela, pelamushi, tklapi, gozinaki and the market fruit are vegan as made; khachapuri and penovani are vegetarian. Vegans should check two things: some bakeries put egg in the lobiani dough, and the Racha lobiani has ham. Ask for samarkhvo, the fasting version, and at a khinkali counter order potato or mushroom without the butter (karakis gareshe). Our vegetarian and vegan guide has the full list and the kitchens.

How to do it well

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