Eating and drinking in Gudauri

Gudauri has close to thirty places to eat and drink. Altimera's directory lists 14 restaurants, six cafes and bakeries and eight bars across the resort, split between New Gudauri at the foot of the slopes and the older village strung along the Georgian Military Highway a few minutes up the road. The ones worth planning a week around are the Georgian kitchens, the two Indian halal restaurants and the daytime stops on the mountain itself.

Georgian cooking is built on bread, cheese, walnuts, herbs and slowly cooked meat, and it is exactly what a body wants after a day at 2,200 metres.

What should you order first?

Four things carry most of the menu, and knowing them by name changes the meal.

• Khinkali. Twisted soup dumplings, usually spiced beef and pork, sometimes mushroom or potato. The broth is inside, so they are eaten by hand: hold the topknot, bite a small opening, drink the broth first, then eat the rest and leave the knot on the plate.
• Khachapuri. Cheese bread, in regional forms. The Adjarian version arrives boat-shaped with butter and a raw egg on top, which you stir into the molten cheese with torn crust. It is enormous: one between two after skiing is a plan, one each before skiing is not.
• Mtsvadi. Meat grilled over vine cuttings and served plain, with raw onion and pomegranate. The simplest thing on the menu and often the best.
• Lobio and pkhali. Beans cooked slowly in a clay pot, and vegetable pastes bound with walnut and garlic. Cheap, filling and entirely meat-free.

Order less than you think. Portions are generous and the table fills fast.

What is a khinkali house actually like?

Loud, plain and quick. A sakhinkle is not styled for visitors: bright lights, a short menu, an order counted in tens rather than in plates, and beer rather than wine, because by Georgian convention wine and khinkali do not belong together.

You order by the piece: five is a snack, ten a meal, and the whole table's order arrives in one batch when it is ready. They come out scalding, so give them a minute.

On the mountain, or in the village?

Two different meals.

On the mountain is a daytime proposition. The cafes and huts beside the pistes keep lift hours: they open when the lifts open and close long before dinner. For the day's exact lift times, see the Gudauri ski pass explained. Expect soup, khachapuri, hot drinks and a very good view; expect a queue between roughly 12:30 and 14:00; and carry cash, because the higher a place sits, the less reliable its card machine tends to be. They are listed under cafes and bakeries.

In the village is the real meal. Almost everything of substance is at resort level, and all fourteen restaurants are listed here. Four to start with:

• Montis, the restaurant at Hotel Carpe Diem, serves Georgian and European food and publishes its hours as 11:00 to 23:00, with the bar until midnight.
• Ati Ambavi, about two kilometres from the centre of Gudauri, is the upscale end: Georgian cooking reworked rather than reproduced, in a boutique hotel.
• Gamarjoba, in block 1 of New Gudauri, is straightforward traditional Georgian.
• Drunk Cherry, at the bottom of the slopes in New Gudauri, covers Georgian food, burgers and pizza, and also does breakfast.

For a drink afterwards, Black Dog Bar pours craft beer and sits away from the rest of the New Gudauri bars, which on a busy night is the point.

Is there halal food in Gudauri?

Yes, and it is easier to find here than in most European ski resorts.

Spice Garden, in Gudauri, describes its food as Indian and Arabic and fully halal, lists vegetarian and Jain dishes, and states its hours as 11:30 to 23:30 every day. Haveli, in New Gudauri, is the resort's other Indian kitchen and describes its food as halal on its own site too.

Confirm halal directly with the restaurant before you rely on it: kitchens in a small resort change hands, and a phone call the week before you travel is worth more than anything written months earlier, this page included.

What about vegetarians and children?

Georgia is unusually good for both.

A large part of the traditional table is vegetable based, in part because Orthodox fasting removes meat and dairy for long stretches of the year, so the vegetable dishes are developed rather than an afterthought. Pkhali, lobio, badrijani nigvzit (aubergine rolled around walnut paste) and the plainer khachapuri will feed a vegetarian well anywhere in the resort. Drunk Cherry lists a vegan burger; Spice Garden lists vegetarian and Jain food.

Children eat easily here: khachapuri is cheese on bread and mtsvadi is meat on a stick, and the resort's Italian kitchens keep pizza and pasta on hand for a night off Georgian food.

What is open, and when?

The pattern to plan around.

• Evening service compresses. Everyone leaves the mountain inside the same hour, so the rush lands roughly between 19:00 and 21:00. Eat at 18:30, or book.
• Peak weeks need a reservation. Between Christmas and Orthodox Christmas on 7 January, and again through February half-term, turning up and hoping is not a plan.
• Cards are widely taken, but not everywhere. Small places and mountain huts are less reliable. Carry lari.
• The public holidays themselves are quieter. 1 and 2 January, 7 January and 19 January are public holidays in Georgia, and kitchen hours shorten around them.
• Some of the resort is winter only. Gudauri empties in spring and part of it closes until the following season, so check anything you read out of season.

When should you just cook in?

More often than people expect, and it is a quiet argument for a studio over a hotel room.

Every Altimera studio has a fully equipped kitchen with an electric stove and a microwave. Cooking in earns its keep on the first night, when you have arrived late off the two and a half hour drive from Tbilisi and nobody wants to go out again; on a storm day; and with small children whose dinner hour does not match a resort's. Buy the makings of one easy meal on the way up, because arriving late with nothing in the fridge is a poor start. The supermarkets and minimarkets are in the directory too.

How do you book a table?

With the restaurant, directly. Every listing in the Gudauri directory carries the business's own contact details, and the booking, the price and the terms are agreed between you and them. Altimera is not an agent for any of these businesses and does not book on their behalf; if you would rather we made the introduction, ask and we will pass your enquiry on.

Then build the week around it: where to eat in Kazbegi and Stepantsminda, when to ski Gudauri, month by month, or the residences themselves.

And if you are here for a winter rather than a week, the full ski season let runs 15 December to 15 April, which is long enough that the kitchen matters more than the restaurant list.