Imeretian cuisine: the walnut-scented heart of Georgian cooking

The cuisine at Georgia’s centre

If Georgian food as a whole has a centre of gravity, that centre is Imereti. The western Georgian region surrounding Kutaisi — Georgia’s second city and former capital of the ancient Colchian and Imeretian kingdoms — produces a cooking tradition that is, in many ways, the baseline against which other Georgian regional cuisines define themselves. When someone says “Georgian food” and means it generically, they are usually describing something close to Imeretian.

This is not to say that Imeretian food is plain or undistinguished. Quite the opposite. But where Megrelian cooking announces itself with heat and Svan cooking with mountain density, Imeretian food speaks in subtler registers: the earthy richness of walnut, the brightness of fresh herbs, the mild tang of fresh imeruli cheese, the complex roundness of tkemali. It is a cuisine of considered balance, and its influence on the rest of Georgian cooking has been profound.

The walnut is the defining ingredient of Imeretian cuisine. Ground walnuts appear in sauces (satsivi, bazhe), in cold vegetable preparations (pkhali), in stuffed aubergines, in soups. The Imeretian relationship with walnuts is not merely culinary — the walnut tree is woven into the region’s folklore, its orchards into the landscape, its harvest into the rhythm of the agricultural year.

Imeruli cheese: the fresh mild foundation

Imeretian cheese (imeruli kveli) is the region’s most important dairy product and one of the most widely consumed cheeses in Georgia. It is made by coagulating fresh cow’s milk with rennet, cutting and draining the curds, then pressing lightly without aging. The result is a white, slightly crumbly fresh cheese with a mild, clean dairy flavour and just enough salt to make it interesting.

Imeruli is eaten fresh — ideally within a day or two of making — on bread, alongside khachapuri (where it also provides the filling), crumbled over salads and vegetable dishes, or simply as part of the spread that covers every Georgian table. Its flavour is gentle enough that it doesn’t overpower anything around it, and its texture is firm enough to hold up to light cooking.

The comparison with Greek feta is frequently made, but it is only partially apt. Feta is sharper, saltier, more assertively flavoured. Imeruli is milder, milkier, and has none of feta’s characteristic crumble — it tears in softer pieces. A more accurate comparison might be a fresh ricotta salata that has not been heavily salted.

Fresh imeruli from the Kutaisi market, made that morning and still warm, is one of the quietly extraordinary food experiences available in Georgia. Eating it with the region’s good bread and a glass of local white wine is sufficient — no elaboration needed.

Imeretian khachapuri: the everyday round

The Imeruli khachapuri — round, flat, sealed, filled with fresh imeruli cheese — is the most widely eaten khachapuri in Georgia and the version that most Georgians would instinctively describe if asked to define the dish. It is also the simplest in construction, which means that quality depends almost entirely on the cheese and the dough.

The cheese filling is made by kneading imeruli with egg and sometimes a small addition of butter or matsoni, giving it a smooth, spreadable consistency. This goes onto half the rolled dough; the other half folds over and the edges are sealed, then the round is gently flattened and cooked on a dry griddle (traditionally a heavy clay ketsi) over medium heat — no oil, no butter in the pan — until both sides are golden and the filling is softened and slightly melted.

Eaten hot, sliced into wedges and pulled apart by hand, Imeruli khachapuri is one of the most immediately satisfying foods in Georgia. Eaten at room temperature later in the day, it is still excellent. It is the kind of food that a nation builds a food identity around: reliable, honest, and better than any version made elsewhere could quite manage.

For the full regional khachapuri comparison, see our khachapuri guide.

Satsivi: cold poultry in walnut sauce

Satsivi is perhaps the most technically accomplished dish in the Imeretian repertoire — and one of the most misunderstood. It is routinely served as a simple chicken dish in tourist restaurants where it is little more than poached chicken in a walnut sauce. At its best, it is something considerably more nuanced.

Properly made satsivi begins with a whole chicken (or turkey, which is the more traditional and in many ways superior choice) poached in aromatic stock. The bird is removed and allowed to cool; the stock is set aside. A sauce is built from ground walnuts — a large quantity, sufficient to make the sauce genuinely thick — blended with the poaching stock, raw egg yolks, garlic, wine vinegar, and a spice blend that includes fenugreek, coriander, turmeric, cloves, and cinnamon. The sauce is cooked gently until it thickens; the poultry is added; the whole dish is cooled to room temperature or lightly chilled.

The result is one of the great cold dishes in world cooking. The walnut sauce is simultaneously rich and bright, the spices giving it a warmth and complexity that develops as the dish sits. The poultry absorbs the sauce’s character through the cooling period; eating satsivi straight from the pot before it has rested is missing most of the point.

Satsivi is a supra dish — it appears at celebratory tables, on feast days, at important family gatherings. Eating a properly made satsivi is an encounter with Georgian cooking at its most considered, and the dish rewards the effort of finding a version made by someone who takes it seriously.

Pkhali: compressed vegetable-walnut rounds

Pkhali (sometimes pchali) are small compressed balls or patties made from finely chopped cooked vegetables — spinach, beet greens, green beans, cabbage, leek — mixed with ground walnuts, garlic, vinegar, and herbs. They are served cold, decorated traditionally with a pomegranate seed pressed into the centre of each one.

The technique is consistent across ingredients; the flavours vary considerably. Spinach pkhali is mild and slightly sweet with an earthiness from the walnut; beet pkhali is more robust and slightly earthy; green bean pkhali is brighter and fresher. A plate of mixed pkhali — four or five varieties arranged together — is one of the most beautiful presentations in Georgian cooking and one of the best arguments for Georgian vegetable cookery being as interesting as its meat cooking.

Pkhali is excellent for vegetarians but eaten with equal enthusiasm by everyone. At a supra, a mixed pkhali plate is one of the first dishes placed on the table. At Tbilisi restaurants, it appears on virtually every menu. The quality varies enormously — the difference between pkhali made with freshly ground walnuts and good wine vinegar, and pkhali made with old walnut paste from a jar, is immediately apparent.

Badrijani nigvzit: fried aubergine with walnut paste

This dish — fried aubergine slices rolled around a walnut-garlic-herb paste — is one of the great Georgian cold starters and another expression of the Imeretian walnut tradition.

Aubergine slices are salted, rested, patted dry, and fried in oil until soft and golden. A paste is made from ground walnuts, garlic, coriander, blue fenugreek, and wine vinegar. A spoonful of the paste goes on each aubergine slice, which is then rolled around it and pressed closed. The finished rolls are arranged on a plate with pomegranate seeds and sometimes fresh herbs.

The fried aubergine is rich and slightly bitter; the walnut paste is earthy, garlicky, and sharp from the vinegar. Together they are considerably better than either component alone. Badrijani nigvzit is one of those Georgian preparations that seems too simple to be as good as it is, and which demonstrates how much Georgian cooking achieves with the combination of walnut, garlic, acid, and fresh herbs.

Lobio: bean stew from the clay pot

Lobio — kidney bean stew — is one of the oldest continuously prepared dishes in Georgian cooking, and the Imeretian version, cooked in a clay pot (also called lobio) over a wood fire, is the standard against which other versions are measured.

The beans are cooked with onion, ground walnuts, garlic, coriander, fenugreek, and a sour element — either tkemali or wine vinegar. Fresh coriander goes in towards the end. The result is served in the clay pot it cooked in, dark and thick, with fresh bread for dipping.

Lobio is simultaneously simple and deeply satisfying — the kind of dish that improves with time, as the flavours settle and integrate. It is also among the most affordable substantial meals available in Georgia; a clay pot of lobio with bread and cheese costs almost nothing and provides everything.

Chakapuli: the spring lamb dish

Chakapuli is a seasonal dish — a spring stew made from young lamb or veal cooked with fresh tarragon, tkemali (sour plum sauce), spring onions, and white wine. It is specific to the spring months when young tarragon is available and the first pale wine of the new season can be opened.

The flavour is arrestingly fresh: the tarragon dominates, giving the dish a coolness and fragrance unlike any other Georgian preparation; the tkemali provides a gentle sourness that lifts the lamb’s richness; the wine enriches the broth. Chakapuli is not a heavy dish — it is the lightest major meat preparation in the Georgian repertoire, and it arrives on the calendar exactly when you want it most, after the cheese-and-bread heaviness of winter.

In Imereti, chakapuli is an Easter table essential. To eat it at the right moment — in the right season, with the right wine — is to understand how Georgian food has always worked with the agricultural calendar rather than against it.

Tkemali: the sour plum sauce

Tkemali deserves its own mention because it is so central to Imeretian (and broadly Georgian) cooking. Made from wild sour plums (tkemali plums, or cornelian cherries in some versions), cooked down with garlic, pennyroyal, and coriander, this dark, tangy sauce appears on Georgian tables the way ketchup appears on tables elsewhere — routinely, unself-consciously, with everything.

The Imeretian version tends to be particularly tart and complex, using both red and green tkemali plums at different points in the season to produce sauces with different character. Green tkemali (made from underripe fruit in early summer) is sharper and fresher; red tkemali (from ripe fruit in autumn) is deeper and more rounded.

Making tkemali in August and September — cooking down kilograms of sour plums into jars of sauce that will last through winter — is one of those preservation rituals that connect modern Georgian households to food practices unchanged for generations.

Where to eat Imeretian food

Kutaisi

Kutaisi is the capital of Imereti and the spiritual home of Imeretian cooking. The market (Green Bazaar) is one of the best in Georgia: fresh imeruli cheese from local producers, wild herbs from mountain collectors, tkemali in half a dozen varieties, churchkhela, good honey. The family restaurants in the neighbourhoods around Bagrati Cathedral serve Imeruli khachapuri, lobio, and pkhali at prices that make the equivalent Tbilisi versions seem extravagant.

For planning time in the region, see our day trips from Kutaisi guide.

Village guesthouses

The agricultural villages of Imereti — between Kutaisi and the Okatse and Martvili canyons — have guesthouses that include evening meals made from the household’s own ingredients: their own imeruli, their own tkemali, their own walnuts. This is where Imeretian food is most honestly experienced.

Tbilisi

Imeretian food is effectively the default at most traditional Georgian restaurants in Tbilisi. The Imeruli khachapuri you eat at breakfast in a neighbourhood bakery is made from this tradition. Quality in Tbilisi is generally reliable; the cheese freshness is the variable that matters most.

Imeretian food and the Imereti table

Imeretian cuisine’s genius lies in its restraint. It has no showmanship, no signature spice-blast, no single ingredient that demands all the attention. What it has is a thorough understanding of how to cook vegetables until they are interesting, how to use ground walnuts as the great enricher and thickener that they are, how to balance dairy fat with herb freshness and acid sharpness. This is Georgian cooking as it is practised daily, at millions of family tables, by people who have never thought of themselves as practitioners of a cuisine but simply as cooks feeding families they love.

FAQ

What distinguishes Imeretian cooking from other Georgian regional styles? Imeretian food is generally milder in spice than Megrelian food and uses more vegetables and fresh herbs. Walnuts are more central here than in Kakheti. The cheese (imeruli) is fresher and milder than sulguni. It is the most broadly accessible of the Georgian regional traditions.

Is Imeretian cuisine vegetarian-friendly? More so than most Georgian regional cuisines. Pkhali, badrijani nigvzit, lobio, and Imeruli khachapuri are all vegetarian. Satsivi and chakapuli contain meat or poultry, but they are served alongside extensive vegetable options at any full Imeretian table.

What wine from Imereti pairs well with Imeretian food? Tsolikouri — the main white grape of Imereti — is the natural companion. Look for both conventional (tank-fermented) and skin-contact (amber) versions. See our amber wine guide for more on Georgia’s wine diversity.

How do I travel between Kutaisi and Tbilisi? The journey is approximately 3–4 hours by marshrutka or shared taxi and 4.5 hours by train. Kutaisi’s Kopitnari airport also has direct connections to several European cities. Our getting around Georgia guide covers all transport options.