Vegetarian Georgian Food: What to Order and Where in Tbilisi

Yes, far more than Georgian food's reputation for grilled pork and meat dumplings suggests. Every supra table has a meat-free half (walnut pâtés, fried aubergine, beans in a clay pot, pickles, bread), and a vegetarian can eat well from it without changing a single order.

The reason is the church calendar. On a strict Orthodox fast day meat, dairy and eggs are all off, so Georgian cooks built a second repertoire without them, and Georgia's tourism board sorts it into walnut dishes, herb dishes, mushrooms and pickles, khinkali, soups, beans, cornmeal, khachapuri and desserts.

Vegans have a harder time than vegetarians, because the same kitchen that pounds walnuts without a drop of dairy also melts butter over dumplings and bakes cheese into bread. The rule of thumb: the cold starters are usually safe, the hot breads never are, and the dumplings depend on the filling.

These are the 12 meat-free dishes you'll meet on Georgian menus in Tbilisi, with the one thing a vegan needs to check for each. Order 2 or 3 cold walnut dishes, a bean pot and something from the bread or dumpling side, and you've ordered the way a Georgian table does.

Dish	What it is	Vegan as served?
Pkhali	Walnut pâté with spinach, beet greens, leek, pepper, green beans or carrot	Yes, as a rule
Badrijani nigvzit	Fried aubergine rolled round walnut paste, often with pomegranate seeds	Yes, as a rule
Georgian salad	Tomato and cucumber, often dressed with walnut paste and herbs	Yes, unless cheese is added
Lobio	Kidney beans stewed in a clay pot, served with cornbread and pickles	Usually; it comes many ways, so ask
Ajapsandali	Aubergine, peppers, potato and tomato stewed with herbs	Yes, as a rule
Mushrooms on a ketsi	Mushrooms baked in a small clay dish	Rarely: usually under sulguni
Potato khinkali	Dumplings filled with potato	Only without the melted butter
Mushroom khinkali	Dumplings filled with chopped mushrooms	Ask how they're finished
Cheese khinkali	Dumplings filled with cheese, served with sour cream	No
Khachapuri	Bread baked with cheese; the adjaruli boat adds egg and butter	No
Lobiani	Bread baked round a bean filling	Ask: Racha-style can carry ham
Mchadi	Flat cornbread, the usual partner for lobio and pkhali	Yes, as a rule

Pkhali is the dish to order first. Georgia's tourism board describes it as a family of walnut-based pâtés made with spinach, beet greens, leeks, red peppers, green beans or carrots, and it usually arrives as a mixed plate of green, red and beige rounds dotted with pomegranate seeds.

Ask for the assorted plate (pkhali assorti on some menus) and eat it with bread or mchadi. At Pasanauri on Kazbegi Avenue, one reviewer's order included assorted pkhali, an aubergine salad and mushroom khinkali, and another singled out the Imeretian khachapuri and the mushrooms with sulguni.

Badrijani nigvzit is the other walnut classic: slices of aubergine fried in oil or baked, spread with walnuts crushed with onion, coriander, salt and vinegar, then rolled up. You'll often see it written as eggplant rolls, and it turns up in reviews all over town: one reviewer at Supra Sololakshi called its rolls the best they'd had so far.

The same walnut paste dresses the Georgian salad of tomato and cucumber, fills roasted peppers and goes into kotrana, boiled white cabbage with walnuts, hazelnuts and pomegranate. That's also why anyone with a nut allergy has to ask about every cold starter on a Georgian menu.

Lobio is kidney beans stewed with herbs and spices and served in the clay pot they cooked in, with mchadi and a plate of pickles alongside. It's the most filling meat-free order on the menu, and at Pirosmani's Dukani, Google's review topics count 14 mentions of it.

Ajapsandali is Georgia's vegetable stew: aubergine, peppers and potatoes cooked down in tomato with fresh herbs. The tourism board calls it a fasting food and a native Tbilisi dish, and it's one of the few hot Georgian dishes that's vegan by design.

Mushrooms on a ketsi are baked in a small round clay dish, and they usually come out under a layer of melted sulguni. That makes them a vegetarian favourite and a vegan's no, unless the kitchen will leave the cheese off.

For soup, the tourism board's vegetarian list names sorrel, pumpkin, barley, potato, mushroom and asparagus. Pumpkin and mushroom both turn up in Tbilisi reviews: one reviewer at Pub Georgian had both, and another at Pirosmani's Dukani singled out the mushroom soup.

The Pub Georgian mushroom soup was a cream soup, so ask before you order either one as a vegan. And skip kharcho, a beef soup made with walnuts, and chikhirtma, a chicken soup thickened with egg.

Khinkali aren't only meat. The tourism board lists potato, mushroom and cheese versions, and the city's khinkali houses put them on the menu right next to the beef and pork, so a mixed table can share one order.

Potato khinkali traditionally come with melted clarified butter or garlic water, and cheese khinkali with sour cream, so a vegan orders potato and asks for the garlic water. Khinkali Bar N1's own Instagram calls its potato khinkali a vegan twist on the classic, and you eat them by hand, like any khinkali.

Khachapuri is the default vegetarian comfort order, and it's never vegan: every version is bread and cheese, and the adjaruli boat adds an egg yolk and butter to stir in. The types of khachapuri change the shape and the filling, from the round imeruli to the Gurian crescent with boiled egg inside, but not the dairy.

Lobiani is the bean-filled cousin and usually the vegan's bread, with one catch: Georgia's tourism board singles out the Racha version made with ham. Bakeries sell it by the piece, and at Caravanserai Bakery, a hatch below street level in the Old Town, one reviewer's lobiani was a good portion for breakfast.

Mchadi is flat cornbread, the partner lobio and pkhali expect, and ghomi is a soft cornmeal porridge that the tourism board says is eaten with cheese and sauces. Elarji, from Samegrelo, is cornmeal cooked with cheese, and one reviewer at Sheen Aura rated its fried elarji alongside the aubergine salad.

Pickles are vegan, and a plate of them (cabbage, green tomatoes, peppers, garlic) comes with lobio and suits everything else. The tourism board calls pickled 'capers', which in Georgia means jonjoli, bladdernut flowers, a must for anyone fasting and a fixture of every religious supra.

Jonjoli is worth hunting down. At Tsiskvili Terrace, Google's review topics count 14 mentions of the lobiani and 2 of lobiani with jonjoli. Order that pairing and you've got the fasting table in a single bite.

A vegetarian's main trap is the walnut sauce that turns out to be over meat: satsivi is chicken or turkey in walnut sauce, and Megrelian kharcho is chicken with walnuts. For vegans the trouble is dairy, eggs and honey, and they turn up in 5 places.

• Butter: melted over potato khinkali and stirred into adjaruli khachapuri. Ask for garlic water with the khinkali instead.
• Cheese: in every khachapuri, on mushrooms baked in a ketsi, cooked into elarji and served with ghomi. Sulguni and imeruli are the Georgian cheeses you'll meet most in these.
• Sour cream and matsoni: sour cream comes with cheese khinkali, and matsoni, the Georgian yoghurt, is a breakfast staple.
• Eggs: the yolk in adjaruli khachapuri, and boiled egg inside the Gurian crescent pie.
• Honey: in gozinaki and korkoti, and fasting rules allow it, so a samarkhvo sweet isn't automatically vegan.

The fix for khachapuri is a fully vegan kitchen. Most of the vegan and vegetarian restaurants in Tbilisi cook international food (falafel, pizza, curry, burgers), but Plantastic Kitchen and Shpana both make Georgian dishes without the dairy.

Shpana's reviewers mention its vegan khachapuri 5 times, and one had an adjaruli with (vegan) egg and cheese plus an eggless version with tomatoes and mushrooms. Plantastic Kitchen's own listing promises veganised Georgian dishes, and one reviewer there called the khinkali the best dish.

Samarkhvo (სამარხვო) means 'for the fast', and in Georgia it marks food made without meat, dairy or eggs, on a menu or a bakery counter. It's the most useful word a vegan can learn here, because a samarkhvo dish has already been through the check you'd otherwise do yourself.

The rules come from the church. On a strict fast day, the Orthodox fasting rule excludes meat, eggs, dairy, fish, wine and oil, and lighter fast days bring oil and wine back. The Georgian Church keeps the old Julian calendar, which puts its dates 13 days behind the civil ones.

Fast	When in Georgia	Length
Nativity fast	28 November to 6 January, ending at Christmas on 7 January	40 days
Great Lent and Holy Week	15 March to 1 May 2027, ending at Easter on Sunday 2 May	7 weeks, the strictest
Apostles' fast	Early summer; its start moves with the Easter date	Varies
Dormition fast	14 to 27 August, ending the day before Mariamoba on 28 August	2 weeks
Wednesdays and Fridays	Every week, outside the fast-free weeks after Christmas, Easter and Pentecost	1 day at a time

Christmas on 7 January and Mariamoba on 28 August are both public holidays under Georgia's Labour Code, so the 2 fasts that end on them finish with a day off and a feast. You'll still find meat on Tbilisi menus through every fast, since fasting is a personal practice, not a rule for restaurants.

The grape and walnut sweets among the Georgian desserts follow the same fasting logic: grapes, walnuts and flour, and no dairy. Churchkhela is walnuts or hazelnuts threaded on a string and dipped in thickened grape juice, which makes it vegan and easy to carry around all day.

Pelamushi is the same boiled grape juice set with white corn meal into a pudding, and tatara is the version made with dark wheat flour; neither traditionally has added sugar. Gozinaki (walnuts in boiled honey, cut into diamonds) and korkoti (boiled wheat with walnuts, honey and raisins) are dairy-free and fit the fasting rules, but the honey rules them out for strict vegans.

The cake shops are a different story, since the layered cakes and eclairs in their windows are butter and cream. For a vegan, the churchkhela stall is the dessert counter.

Any serious Georgian restaurant will feed a vegetarian well, because pkhali, badrijani and lobio are the backbone of the menu, not a side option. Start with the kitchens where reviewers keep ordering the meat-free classics, and head to a vegan kitchen when you want khinkali and khachapuri without the dairy.

• On a budget: at Family Kitchen Tar Tun you pick home-cooked dishes from the counter and, one reviewer says, pay by weight. Another singles out the aubergine roll, and Google's price band is 10 to 20 GEL.
• Late: Asi Khinkali serves until 2 AM every night, and one reviewer rated its potato khinkali the tastiest they'd had so far.
• To learn it: cooking classes regularly put pkhali and badrijani on the menu, and several take vegetarians. Tbilisi Cooking Class offers vegetarian options on request, and reviews of Nana's Kitchen describe menus adapted for vegetarian and vegan groups.

A meat-free Georgian dinner costs what any Georgian dinner does. Google puts Pirosmani's Dukani and Khinkali Bar N1 in its 20 to 50 GEL price band and both vegan kitchens at 20 to 30 GEL, and at Caravanserai Bakery one reviewer paid 3 GEL for a khachapuri.

English goes a long way in the Old Town, but at a bakery hatch or a family table a Georgian phrase gets you a straighter answer. Keep it to the question, and point at the dish.

Say	Georgian	Meaning
Me khortss ar vcham	მე ხორცს არ ვჭამ	I don't eat meat
Rdzis produktebs ar vcham	რძის პროდუქტებს არ ვჭამ	I don't eat dairy products
Khortsi akvs?	ხორცი აქვს?	Does it have meat in it?
Kvertskhi akvs?	კვერცხი აქვს?	Does it have egg in it?
Samarkhvo	სამარხვო	For the fast: no meat, dairy or eggs