Shashlik kebabs in Georgia. Photo credit: Gabrielle Jackson
I walked the streets of Tbilisi with a spring in my step. It was beautiful and beauty gives me energy, true, but it was more than that. There seemed to be a creative energy in the city that was palpable. I could feel it touching my skin and it was as though I had plugged myself into its electrical current and was being charged.
The energy that I’d been lacking was renewed and I finally felt able to write again. There had been a hiatus of a few weeks, really, and I was worried my writer’s block may be permanent. I was behind and it made me nervous. But suddenly, once I’d got over not being sold into a Russian prostitution gang, I was raring to go.
I’d popped into the tourist information office, got myself a map and set off down Rustaveli Avenue at a pace that Michael Johnson would be proud of. And on my way I stumbled across Doner Club.
Of course, I knew there were kebabs in Georgia. I mean, would I come here if there weren’t? I’d done my research, discovered there were kebabs and headed this way.
There are, just like every country around here, many different kinds of kebab. Shashlik, which we call shish, is cooked over a coal barbecue and taken off the skewer to serve. It is most often pork, although veal is also very popular, and it is always served with a sauce. Depending on the region, the sauce is different. What they call tomato sauce is usually spiced with some chillies and sometimes sweetened with pomegranates. Occasionally the sauce will be made from green tomatoes and very much resembles a Mexican salsa verde. They were all fantastic, everywhere I had it.
But back to Doner Club. I walked in and, as is often the case in Georgia, I made instant friends. The whole family was there this day sharing tea and a good time. They couldn’t wait to tell me I was beautiful, ask where I was from, what my job was, who I was with, and if I liked their brother. I pretended I didn’t understand that last bit and tottered off upstairs with my kebab.
I was very pleasantly surprised. I’d opted for chicken, which was cooked to perfection. Where the Turkish doner kebabs lacked sauce, the Georgians made up for it. This is probably the closest kebab to what we get in London or Sydney, but not quite. There are two sauces – a tomato chilli sauce and a white sauce. This particular kebab also had tiny green chillies mixed in with the salad. They provided a wonderful heat until I got down to my penultimate bite, when I got a hot one. My mouth was on fire and I wasn’t able to eat anymore, but it was a great kebab, if a teeny weeny bit too saucy.
It gave me another energy kick to get back on the road and well, then I got lost, but it was still a great day.
Inspired by this good experience, I had a second doner kebab about a week later. This doner kebab shack was on Leselidze Street, the main street through the old town and just off which I was staying. This is literally a little hole in the wall but drew my attention because of the incessant queues there (well, the closest thing the Georgians get to a queue). It seems to be open all the time and no matter what time of the day it is, people are crowded around baying for a kebab. When I eventually got around to trying it, I wasn’t disappointed. The salad included onion, tomato, cucumber and parsley. The cucumber and parsley provided a freshness that balanced the rich flavor of the meat. It’s clear to see this bloke takes great pride in his doner and he cannot be rushed. Trust me, I stood there for 45 minutes on a 0 degree night once. I wouldn’t have waited, only I’d had it before and knew how damn good it was. And for five lari (£2), who can complain?
This guy first layers the lavash bread with chilli sauce, then some salad – onion, tomato, cucumber, parsley, always in that order – then the meat, then more salad, then more chilli sauce and then the white sauce. The white sauce isn’t garlic sauce as we know it; it is more like crème fraiche but not quite, and yet not quite yoghurt either. When it is mixed up with that chilli sauce, it is de-licious!
These are the kinds of kebabs that have enabled me to be excited about my Kebab Quest again. The kind, along with the shashlik, that have kept me plugged in that Tbilisi energy. And I like it!
So, how about chilli ratings?
Doner Club on Rustaveli Avenue gets four, for sure.
The window on that corner of Leselidze Street also gets four. Part of me wants to give it five, because there was certainly a wow factor involved, but it was too big. If it had been two-thirds the size I would have finished with a massive smile on my face, wanting more. But I can’t stop eating, I just don’t have that willpower, and so by the end, I felt a little sick. This isn’t in fact a fault of the proud shop owner, I know, but what can I say – size matters. Four chillies.
A version of this story first appeared on KebabQuest.
