Last month, at my book club, a friend from Hungary mentioned that there was a nice Georgian (the country in Eastern Europe/Western Asia) restaurant nearby. This month, our friend who is unofficially in charge of choosing the restaurant chose this Georgian restaurant for us.
I’ve never been to Georgia, and I’ve never had Georgian food, so I was looking forward to the adventure!
The first part of the adventure was actually finding the restaurant.
How to get there?
Chinese name of the restaurant: 格鲁吉亚美食馆(万菱广场店) (Gelujiya Meishi guan Wan Ling Guangchang dian)
English name: Georgia Gourmet Restaurant (Onelink International Plaza Branch)
Address: 广东省广州市越秀区人民街道解放南路万菱金贸中心9楼1号 (Guangdong Sheng Guangzhou Shi Yuexiu Qu Renmin Jiedao Jiefang nan lu wan ling jin mao zhongxin 9 lou 1 hao)
It was nestled away at the top of a mall, also in the same building as a bunch of offices. There are a couple of ways to get to the restaurant. The closest metro station is Haizhu Square on line 2 or line 6. Once you get to the mall, you can go up the mall elevators to 8th floor and then take the escalator to the 9th floor.
The mall is a fun place to walk around also. I used to go there with friends, especially at Christmas time since it has lots of Christmas decorations. It’s basically a collection of tiny warehouses for different products. There’s a toy section, there are random knickknacks, and there are housing decorations. A lot of the things are cheaper, and it’s an interesting place to walk around and you can find some fun souvenirs. In another nearby mall, there’s a lady that sells Christmas cards, and I used to always go there to get my Christmas cards. They were super cheap, and it was fun to look through all the cards. Recently, I haven’t had as much time, so I just buy the cards online.
The other way to get to the restaurant, and the easier way is to find the office lobby escalators and then I think you can take them directly to the 9th floor. But the elevators are a bit special. You have to find the floor that you want on a screen by the elevator and then push that floor. The machine will then tell you which elevator to take (there are about 6 altogether, so make sure you get on the right elevator because there are no buttons in the elevators!).
Once you get to the right floor, you can wander around until you find the restaurant—there isn’t much else open on that floor.
What’s the food like?
When we were there, we ordered a 4-person set meal, but we had 7 people, so we also added a few other dishes. I wasn’t sure what to expect for Georgian food, but it was delicious! Georgia is near Turkey, and the food was a bit similar to Turkish food, but they also had a Hungarian dish (or at least a beef and vegetable stew that looked like Goulash) and they had beef imported from Argentina. Most of the steak was pretty expensive, so we avoided that, but we did get a meat platter that was really nice.
There were also some really good breads including a kind of pizza with an egg in the middle and some meat-filled breaded rolls. There were some mushrooms filled with cheese and served in a green sauce that we guessed was pesto. They were really good, although I wished that the mushrooms had absorbed more of the pesto flavoring. We also got a potato salad that was very similar to Russian potato salads (or in America we usually just call them potato salads), and it was really nice! We had several soups, and I got to sample a bit of each one. There was a minestrone-type soup, a mushroom soup that was pretty thin and a beet soup that looked similar to borscht (Russian soup), but didn’t taste as rich.
And then there was dessert! Our set meal came with a cheesecake and some little berry pies. We cut the cheesecake into small pieces, and it was amazing. I didn’t get to try the berry pie, but it looked good, and since it was gone before I could snag one, I’m guessing it was tasty!
Writing about the food now makes me hungry again, but I would strongly recommend it! We spent around 80 kuai per person (about $12), but you could easily spend more if you wanted the expensive things. You could also probably spend less if you wanted. There were also quite a few people there on a Saturday for lunch including many Chinese people. Brandon had called ahead to reserve the table, and we stayed there for several hours eating, talking, and then discussing our book of the month.
This month we read Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen. Ironically, the climax of the book was about a delicious French feast. We didn’t have a French feast, but we did have a Georgian Feast, and it was good to talk about someone else’s feast after we’d had our own! Also, one of the things that several people noticed from the book is that several of the characters in the book were unable or unwilling to enjoy the delicious food that had been prepared for them. They lived very simple lives, and when they received this delicious feast, they were too afraid of it to enjoy it completely.
I love good food, and I want to thank and praise God for the delicious food that He provides, and then I want to enjoy it. I believe that God has given us wonderful things for our enjoyment. Whether that joy comes from a really nice meal, or a sunset that paints the sky pink, or a fun game of soccer/football, or a really good chat with a friend, or a swim in the pool at the bottom of a waterfall on a hot day, I want to enjoy these beautiful gifts. But I don’t want to enjoy the gifts so much that I lose sight of the Giver. God has created a beautiful world with many incredible blessings, and I want to enjoy these good gifts, praising Him and loving Him more as the Creator of all of this beauty.
