Georgian Gourmet Mallorca-Restaurante Georgiano en Palma

Georgian Gourmet Mallorca is a Georgian restaurant in Palma's old town, tucked into the narrow Travessa d'en Ballester a few steps from the Plaça Major. A family has put a piece of Georgia in here — the house describes it that way itself: far from the mountains of the Caucasus, in the middle of the Mediterranean city. Georgian food is not something you run into on every corner in Mallorca. If the cuisine is new to you: it is not hot, but firmly spiced, it works with walnut where others reach for oil or cream, and it is generous towards vegetarians by nature — not as a concession, but because a large part of its repertoire does without meat anyway. Khinkali and khachapuri at Georgian Gourmet Mallorca Two dishes carry the menu, and the house tells the story of both along with them. Khinkali are wheat-flour parcels with a meat filling, born in the mountain regions of Tusheti, Pshavi and Khevsureti in north-eastern Georgia. They counted as a symbolic offering to the sun and came to the table on Sundays and holidays; the twisted top recalls Borjgali, the Georgian sign of the sun. A genuine khinkali, so they say, has nineteen folds. Here they are folded by hand, one after another. Khachapuri is Georgian cheese bread. Tradition has it that shepherds invented it, men who spent long stretches in the mountains and needed something that travelled well and stayed fresh. The name alone joins two cultures: "khacha" means curd cheese in Georgian, "puri" comes from India and means bread. A second theory makes khachapuri a relative of the pizza — Roman soldiers on the Black Sea are said to have carried the recipe in one direction or the other. The most famous variant is called Adjaruli and has the shape of a boat. That is no accident: Adjara lies on the Black Sea and its people were boat builders. The cheese stands for the sea, the egg yolk in the middle for the sun. The women of the region, legend says, baked their husbands a khachapuri before they put out to sea, wishing them calm water and a bright day. The vegetarian side of the menu If you do not eat meat, you are not an afterthought here. Badrijani nigvzit are aubergine rolls filled with a walnut-and-herb cream, entirely vegan and one of the most widespread Georgian starters there is. Pkhali is more spread than salad: finely chopped vegetables — spinach, carrot, beans, cabbage or beetroot — bound with crushed walnut, often scattered with pomegranate seeds and eaten with mchadi, the Georgian corn bread. Alongside comes mtsvane lobio, a salad of green beans, walnuts, garlic and aromatic herbs of the kind prized in the Imereti region. Wine from the Caucasus Wine is built into the concept at Georgian Gourmet Mallorca: alongside the restaurant the house runs its own wine bar with Georgian wines chosen to match the kitchen. And if you would rather eat at home, you can take it with you — from the khinkali to the freshly baked khachapuri, most of it travels across the counter too. The frame stays modest: a small room, hosts who explain what arrives on the plate, and a presence that speaks English, German, Russian and Georgian as well as Spanish. Eating here feels less like a production than like a visit.