“Is it … wrong?” my friend asked as we looked at the bill. We reran our currency calculations. The total was correct.
Our meal – one which we’d been unable to finish – of khachapuri (boat-shaped breads oozing with cheese, butter and a burst-in-the-middle egg), juicy chicken kebab, a clay pot of lobio (salty yet creamy bean stew), flatbreads, dips, wine and water, had come to just £9 each.
We were sitting in Pasanauri, a rustic-style restaurant just by Liberty Square in the centre of Tbilisi, Georgia. In any other city this would be a prime area for overcharging tourists.
As prices have jumped in what used to be the cheaper cities in Europe (such as Budapest, Prague, Dubrovnik), we had decided to look further afield for a city break that would offer appealing food, wine and culture for less.
With a combined budget of less than £100 per night, my friend and I were able to get a comfy twin room just off Tbilisi’s main avenue – where the major galleries and museums are located.
Our accommodation, the four-star Shota@Rustaveli Boutique Hotel, had a suntrap terrace twisted with vines and a large pool and sauna, all for less than £80 a night. To get a four-star hotel with a pool and spa in Budapest or Prague, we’d have been paying around £150 a night.
The city also delivered with its food choices. Georgia is the oldest wine-making country in the world and wine was both cheap and omnipresent. In supermarkets, bottles started at about £3.80 while in wine bars such as 8,000 Vintages, we found them from about £4.50.
Sarah Abbott, a Master of Wine who has travelled to Georgia many times, told me: “I always take an empty suitcase when I go to Georgia because you can buy the finest wines from the most sought-after small producers at about half the price of what you’d pay in the UK.”
Meanwhile, our most memorable meal was at Barbarestan, a restaurant run by the Kurasbediani family and their 10 children. The restaurant began life when the patriarch, Zviadi Kurasbediani, found a 19th-century cookbook of forgotten national recipes, written by a Georgian princess, in a flea market. Since then the family has been reviving the lost dishes one by one on their menu.
Our meal began with one of the sons presenting us the dog-eared cookbook in a box. The theatre continued from there. He spooned a Georgian take on fondue (the cheese aged for six months underground) and roast suckling pig onto our plates. Although it was by far the most expensive restaurant we tried, you could still get a main for about £17.
The city is mix of crumbling 12th-century city walls, grand neoclassical palaces on tree-lined boulevards and Islamic architecture in the sulphur bathhouse quarter.
In parts, I felt like I could be in Paris or Vienna, in others, Istanbul. We took the cable car (about 80p one-way) up to the around 1,700-year-old Narikala Fortress for a bird’s eye view.
But there was plenty to do besides walking and none of it was going to break the budget.
A visit to the baths to soak in the naturally hot sulfurous waters cost from just £3 (compared to about £25 these days in Budapest). The public bathhouses are not luxurious – you can pay extra for a higher-end private room – but when massages cost from £6, who’s complaining?
Entry to the National Botanical Garden of Georgia starts at around £1 (around a third as much as the one in Prague). The gardens are a forest of secret grottos and waterfalls with plants and trees from destinations such as the Himalayas and Japan.
While Tbilisi could keep you entertained for days, it is also surrounded by places that are ideal for a day trip.
Within two hours, we were in Kakheti, Georgia’s celebrated wine region, where we drove from vineyard to vineyard sampling wines. Here, you can stay with local families offering b&b (often even dinner too) from about £20–£25 a night.
The one sticking point, of a city break in Tbilisi, however, is getting there. Return flights cost from about £140, but require a stop-off in Istanbul – adding up to more than seven hours in total. Airline talks are ongoing about resuming direct services from the UK.
However, Turkish Airlines offers a “Stopover in Istanbul” programme, which entitles connecting passengers to one night free at a hotel so you can explore the city.
Back in the UK, where I immediately spent £9 on a salad, I dreamt back to the Georgian feast of cheesy bread boats and hulking meaty skewers. There are few places where I have eaten so well so cheaply.
The writer was a guest of Regent Holidays.
Staying there
A twin room at Shota@Rustaveli Boutique Hotel costs from around £76 per night, without breakfast.Getting there
Return flights cost from £151 with a stop in Istanbul. Turkish Airlines offers a stopover in Istanbul programme.Further information
visitgeorgia.ge
