Bazaar tours in Georgia (and other delicious facts)
One of my favorite things to do in any town is to hit up the local bazaar. Although some people find the bazaars too chaotic for their liking, for me it’s the perfect place to go shopping. It’s a vividly sensory experience, full of all kinds of colors, smells, and sounds. I love interacting directly with the producers and dealers of products, chatting, tasting, and forming personal relationships with the folks whose stuff I like best and come back to repeatedly. I can never visit a bazaar without emerging with a bag full of stuff – some interesting looking tea, a spice I needed to stock up on, the seasonal fruit that I had just been craving, or some traditional Georgian snacks or dried fruit for a treat. It’s an old-fashioned way of shopping that is somehow extremely satisfying to the soul, and it makes an easy excursion for a slow afternoon in any major town.
The biggest, most interesting bazaars are in the cities and large towns. Tbilisi has several different bazaar locations covering multiple city blocks, while lively bazaars are also to be found in the centers of Kutaisi, Zugdidi, Ozurgeti, Telavi, Zestaponi, Kobuleti, and Batumi. For something a little different, I’d be happy to take you on a guided bazaar dive in any of the places we travel to – or feel free to explore and experience it on your own time; it’s really an experience like no other.
A trip to the bazaar will give you a direct idea of why Georgian food is so delicious – the ingredients are typically far fresher and higher quality than you would ever find in a North American or European market. Besides this, Georgian cuisine also relies on a rich and peculiar palette of spices – from the ubiquitous presence of walnuts and pomegranate, to local varieties of marigold and fenugreek, to bold essays of sumac and tarragon, to get its hearty and unique tastiness. In the end, although Georgian fare hearkens a bit to the Middle East and a bit to Eastern Europe, it ultimately derives its greatest inspiration from its own mountains; garnishes like wild plum sauce and pickled jonjoli flowers are flavors you won’t experience anywhere else.
Although certain common themes extend throughout the whole range of Georgian cooking, there is nevertheless a great amount of diversity region by region. Certain different spice blends, varieties of cheese, preferences for wheat flour versus cornmeal, and seasonal availability of particular vegetables, herbs, or kinds of meat make all the difference. As such, travel around Georgia can be a continuous series of revelations, where every khachapuri (cheese pastry) you eat is has a different texture, every lobio (bean pie) is differently spiced, every pkhali (vegetable-walnut-spice puree) has a unique flavor and every mtsvadi (meat barbecue) is grilled with a new technique.
While meat dishes are quite common and popular, Georgia does not lack for vegetarian options; those who don’t eat meat can enjoy a wide variety of traditional “fasting” dishes, prepared for devout Orthodox Christians who abstain from animal products in Lenten periods. As your guide in Georgia, I’m able to recommend the best restaurants anywhere you go for tasting local specialities, as well as arrange visits to Georgian family homes for the kind of delicious home cooking impossible to find at any commercial establishment.
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Screengrab of a video made by Davidsbeenhere, a traveller and content creator I took around Georgia in 2021. Here we are in the Kutaisi bazaar.
Screengrab of a video made by Davidsbeenhere, a traveller and content creator I took around Georgia in 2021. Here we are in the Telavi bazaar.