I love Georgian food and Oda House’s is great. Georgian cuisine is heavily influenced by the cuisine of Persia, which can be seen in its extensive use of herbs, walnuts, and pomegranates and emphasis on sweet-tart-savory flavor profiles. The appetizer known as nigvziani badrijani or eggplant rolls is a prime example of this: eggplants rolled around a paste of walnuts, garlic, and herbs and topped with pomegranate arils. At Oda House, this classic eggplant roll is accompanied by three variations: one with garlic and cilantro; one with red bell pepper, onion, herbs, and spices; and one with tomato, onion and herbs. All excellent, though I think the original is still the star.
Another classic, and quite unique, Georgian food is khinkali, or soup dumplings. These bear a surprisingly strong resemblance to Shanghaianese soup dumplings (xiao long bao) with the exception that khinkali have a much thicker top, which is traditionally used as a handle. The eating process is the same, though: bite a hole, suck out the soup, then eat the rest of the dumpling.
Another classic Georgian dish is khachapuri, that is, cheese bread. Different regions of Georgia have their own version; we got megruli khachapuri, which is one of the three most common types. You can tell it was good because we only remembered to take a photo after we’d already eaten most of it!
All of the preceding dishes are relatively common sights at Georgian restaurants; however, this one, tsitsila rachulad, was not one I’d seen before. It is a dish of Cornish hen cooked in a thick, sticky blackberry sauce. The idea of it is very Persian and falls into the classic sweet-tart-savory flavor profile, but the use of blackberries is not one I’d seen before and was particularly effective here. The other dishes were extremely good but this was extraordinary.
Oda House
406 E 73rd St
New York, NY 10021