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This Oda House NYC Review is our first NYC restaurant review after NYC's reopening of restaurants for outdoor dining. We were glad we made an advance reservation, since by the time we left, each outdoor table was occupied–there are apparently plenty of other Georgian cuisine fans.
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Oda House NYC Location and Hours
Oda House is located at 406 East 73rd Street in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, between 1st Avenue and York Avenue. The restaurant is open (outdoor seating only, at time of writing) daily from noon to 9pm.
There used to be two Oda House locations; we reviewed the now closed lower east side Oda House several years ago.
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Oda House NYC Menu
The Oda House menu offers a good variety of choices, especially where khachapuri (cheese bread) is concerned. Our recommendation is to focus on the appetizers and khachapuri, rather than the dinner entrees.
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Oda House Food
First to arrive were our appetizers. As usual we ordered the Pkhali Trio, which included spinach, leek and eggplant pkhali, a kind of Georgian vegetable pate made with walnuts. They were solid, although unlike the better versions we've had in Russia, the pomegranate seeds weren't very ripe.
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We tried a cold appetizer of beets in plum sauce, which was only ok. I'm glad we tried something new, but I wouldn't order it again. There were lots of leftovers, which I took home and tried to doctor (with limited success) into a passable beet and goat cheese salad.
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The Dolma/Tolma, stuffed grape leaves with yogurt sauce, were very good, but the portion (5) was stingy for the $20 price.
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The highlight, as we expected, were the two Adjaruli Khachapuri that we ordered. These are rich cheese breads, so we always remove the pat of butter and only mix the egg into the sulguni cheese in the center. The sulguni cheese is so hot that it cooks the egg. The strategy then is to tear or cut off pieces of the piping hot yeast bread and dip it into the melted sulguni cheese-egg mixture. Heavenly!
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The Verdict
We enjoyed most but not all of what we ordered at Oda House. Everyone's favorite, by far, was the Adjaruli Khachapuri, and we're very glad that we ordered two of them (we didn't manage to finish both, but took home the leftovers). The Dolma/Tolma were also very good, but expensive for what we got: only five pieces for $20. The Pkhali Trio was tasty, and we'd order it again.
We were disappointed with our initial interactions with the staff, who wanted to give us a worse table right by the sidewalk, even though we were celebrating a special occasion. We eventually persuaded them to give us a better table, but I wouldn't choose this restaurant to celebrate a special occasion in light of our experience.
The QR code for the menu worked smoothly, and the food itself was very solid–it's easily your best bet for Georgian cuisine in Manhattan.
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