This Review of Kakha Bar for Georgian Food in St. Petersburg, Russia, is one of our many Russia posts. Visiting St. Petersburg? See all our posts tagged St. Petersburg.
Kakha Bar is a sister restaurant of one of our other favorite St. Petersburg restaurants, Vkus Est (Taste to Eat). They're even walking distance from each other, near the Fontanka River, although Kakha Bar specializes in updated Georgian cuisine.
Kakha Bar Location and Reservations
Kakha Bar is located at Rubenstein St., 24, between Shcherbakov Lane and Grafskiy Lane, on a stretch of Rubenstein St. with many other restaurants and bars. It serves lunch and dinner daily from 12noon until 11pm (until midnight or 1am on the weekends). I recommend booking on the Web site, since you'll enjoy a complimentary homemade lemonade drink, which for our visit was deliciously herbal, made with tarragon.
Kakha Bar Restaurant Menu and Food
If you've tried traditional Georgian food, you know all about its many salads, yeasted cheesy breads, known as khachapuri, dumplings, known as khinkali, vegetable pates, known as pkhali, and the liberal use of pomegranate seeds. Kakha Bar has these favorites, but also updates some of them, for example with dishes such as Eggplant Guacamole with tortilla chips, a sous-vide trout dish served with adjika hot sauce, a vegetarian Mamaliga (Georgian polenta) served with lentil lobio and Georgian yogurt, and more.
First to arrive, after our complimentary tarragon lemonade, were the dolma. Sometimes dolma arrive as a cold appetizer, but these were warm and fresh, with a deliciously tangy yogurt dipping sauce.
A must for us, given our love of cheese, is khachapuri. We prefer to order the Adjaruli one, which is shaped like a boat and has a raw egg cracked into it right before serving.
Because the Georgian sulguni cheese in the center is so hot, you mix the egg into it to cook it, then break off pieces of the bread to dip into it. Heavenly!
I also requested some adjika hot sauce, which traditionally is eaten with shashlik and grilled meats, but which I like to dab on the khachapuri to spice it up a bit. Completely unorthodox, but tasty.
The Stracciatella Salad with tomatoes and tart Georgian tkemali sauce, made of sour plums, was a wonderful fresh foil to the rich and cheese khachapuri.
Georgian khinkali dumplings are a bit like soup dumplings, with savory broth in them, although they're a bit too big to eat in one gulp so it can get messy. Nevertheless, it was worth ordering them, with our favorite variety the lamb one.
The Verdict
There are many good Georgian restaurants in St. Petersburg, but we definitely enjoyed our visit to Kakha Bar and thought both the food and service was excellent. The complimentary tarragon lemonade was a nice perk of booking online, and the atmosphere was relaxed and would have been right at home in Brooklyn. Prices were very reasonable as well: about the equivalent of $20 for two including tip for our feast of dolma, khachapuri, salad and khinkali.
If you've tried Georgian cuisine, what is your favorite dish?
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