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On the facade of Laliko, a sleek new restaurant in the West Village, the name of the establishment hangs above the entrance, and a sign glows next to a large plate-glass window: “Stories of Georgia.” There’s not much overt storytelling inside; in a cosmopolitan vein, neither the staff nor the menu reveal much about the cuisine—this is one of the world’s great cuisines, their restraint seems to suggest. Shouldn’t you know by now?—though the cuisine itself makes that clear enough. Georgia, a jagged promontory of the South Caucasus sandwiched between Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the Black Sea, is a remarkably agriculturally rich region, its valleys teeming with farms and orchards, its vineyards greening on what seems like every hillside. (When I visited Tbilisi nearly a decade ago, I was struck by how even the tomatoes at the McDonald’s near the airport were as bright, juicy, and complex as the best produce from the farmers’ market back home.) Its cuisine is flavorful, bold, and poetic, a feast of simmered stews and roasted meats, lightly seasoned, with bright and sour accents from fresh herbs and tart fruit vinegars. You can practically trace the Silk Road in khinkali, steamed soup dumplings whose delicate fillings of soft lamb or creamy cheese look west to the vareniki and pelmeni of Eastern Europe, while their compressed shells and thick, spicy broth point east to China’s xiao long bao.
At Laliko, which opened in March, the khinkali are gorgeous, plump and tender, their supple dough rolled to porcelain thinness, their swirly tops meticulously decorated. You can order them in sets of four, or indulge in the absurd, delicious, and unabashedly Instagrammable Mother Khinkali, mega-dumplings the diameter and brightness of a birthday-party balloon. When they arrive at your table, the waiter will present an ornate silver dagger for inspection, draw it with a flourish from its curved sheath, and proceed to slice off the Mother’s head, roughly at her Tropic of Cancer. Inside will be your choice of half a dozen standard dumplings, resembling a cluster of tiny, steaming babies, with a few pinches of freshly ground black pepper on top. Sure, they taste exactly like khinkali made without parental supervision, but there’s a real pleasure in such blatant display in a fairly simple and stylish little restaurant.
Ajapsandali, reminiscent of ratatouille, is served with a slice of hard cheese with a nutty flavor.
Laliko is the first American establishment for Gurami Oniani, whose Guliani Group operates some thirty restaurants in Tbilisi and Moscow. Oniani has said he hopes to introduce his country’s cuisine to the world, and that Laliko will be the harbinger of a grand flourishing of Georgian restaurants across North America. New York City is likely an interesting place to launch his campaign as a culinary ambassador: the cuisine is already well represented there, not only in the post-Soviet enclave of Brighton Beach, but in dozens of Georgian restaurants of all sophistication levels and price points across Man
Sourse: newyorker.com
