Lordship Lane is an old thoroughfare in the middle of Dulwich. If you can justify the trip on the Thameslink there are several excellent spots to ingest and imbibe, but none quite as delicious as Kartuli. Sitting about halfway down the lane, the Georgian restaurant’s ground floor interior was originally fitted out for the David Greig chain of grocery stores – and is almost worth visiting for its elaborately tiled walls alone.
Having visited the restaurant once before, I knew the only rational beginning to my meal was acharuli khachapuri – a traditional dish that speaks loudly to the desire in every right-thinking human for bread and cheese. The bake is supple, pillowy soft, and cupped like a supplicant hand ready to receive the salty, tangy cheese that generously fills it to the brim. To improve matters further, the ceremony is continued with a big pat of butter and then, you guessed it, crowned with an egg. It is a glorious, straightforward, delicious dish, and as I washed it down with my first sip of nectar-like amber wine, I knew why I remembered this place so fondly.
Recalling the taste of food is a difficult task. Pulling a dish from your mind and placing it on your tongue is never quite as fulfilling as the real thing. Flavour, whether it be a teasingly ripe tomato bursting with matured sun or a steak so atavistically juicy you can feel the iron pumping through your veins, is temporary. It is sensed and then swallowed, grasped and then disappeared. Proust’s famous moment of sudden nostalgia was triggered by a madeleine, and I can’t help but think that his attempt to capture the beauty and grief of memory would not read nearly as profoundly if it hadn’t been instigated by an impossibly light sponge cake dipped in tea. This begs the question, what if taste and smell have unique qualities for provoking the past? As I sat alone at my candlelit table, swirling my egg yolk into molten cheese and watching the other diners doing the same, I was wrenched back to the last time I ate this triumphant bread with someone no longer in my life. Food once again, became more than just taste.
The meal continued, and as the waiter brought me my starter of fried aubergine slices filled with spiced ground walnuts and sweet garlic, I spoke to him about Georgian wine – the making of which stretches back to 300BC – and how it is traditionally fermented underground in clay vessels called qvevri. He explained that they give the wine just enough skin contact to impart a bruising, tannic strength, recalling his grandfather burying his own qvevri in the mountainside by his childhood home.
For my main course, my dutiful waiter recommended I try the khinkali – a typical mountain dish of dumplings filled with beef and pork. I was soon cutting into one eagerly, spilling a pool of rich, herby stock onto my plate – and inadvertently committing a faux pas in the process. The waiter approached me a little sheepishly, explaining the trick is to hold the head of the dumpling, bite a hole in the side and drink the stock like you’re squeezing a sack of wine. Only after that can you enjoy the lusciously tender filling. Sometimes you just have to know the tricks of the trade. I finished my meal with a pear poached in Kindzmarauli, a naturally semi-sweet red wine. It was exquisite. I knew this place was special, and as I waited for the bill, I contemplated why.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin once said, ‘Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are’, a phrase that perfectly locates the nexus that food creates between biology and culture. Food, made and eaten by a group of people over time is not just fuel, but symbolic and full of memory – and the Georgian people have a lot to remember. It is a nation that has experienced the ebbs and flows of history, freedom, domination, peace and violence, but its food represents independence and joy – as well as its passing point between East and West, incorporating flavours from the Baltics, Iran, Turkey and the Mediterranean. I can only imagine what memories a taste of khachapuri, khinkahli, a sip of Georgian wine, or a perfectly poached pear might inspire in someone no longer living in – but yearning for – their homeland. For me, it brought back memories of my first visit to Kartuli – a time in my life that I had since encased in my own qvevri and left buried somewhere. Which, I suppose, is a roundabout way of telling you to go and try the acharuli khachapuri – you won’t regret it.