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Off the eaten track – Martvili, Georgia

March 25, 2020March 25, 2020
by Jono

Martvili was a mixed bag of goods – I’ll explain why. The initial reason for coming was the recommendation of a local, who said that the canyon is pretty and all.

When we arrived, we were initially not blown away – the town itself is pretty small, with not a lot happening. We did, in fact, end up doing the boat ride down the canyon, which ended up being expensive and short. Pretty, but way too short to make it worthwhile.

We did, however, manage to find a waterfall about 500m downstream of the main canyon, which was both free and beautiful, and you can swim to your hearts content.

The food on day 1 was functional (picnic lunch in a park and supper in our guest house), but for lunch on the second day we went to a supermarket café (believe it or not!) and had some surprisingly good food!

This little café inside the supermarket was packed with locals, and served loads of mezze type things at breakneck prices. If you arrive in Martvili, go to the north end of town and look for the green supermarket.

We had a chicken/mayo paste, a massive salad, some fried corn bread dumplings, lobio (bean stew), an aubergine and beef stew, and a delicious green dumpling of some sort, which apparently was made from some type of bean that we don’t get back home. All this clocked in at 16gel (R80 zar), for 2 people.

After all this heaviness we walked to the monastery on the hill and sat behind the monastery drinking beer and looking at the view. Needed some walking to get the lunch to settle. The monastery was lovely, and apparently for 25gel each they take you into the cellar for a wine tasting, but we don’t have that sort of money.

Supper, now, was a much more formal affair – there’s a little restaurant just outside of town called Sanapiro – they had a bunch of traditional food items which are regional specialities. Of course we went a bit overboard, but hey, we had to sample as much as possible within our budget.

Supper was fried river trout stuffed with walnuts, a fresh green salad, a plate of crispy veggies, gomi (mieliepap with cheese), another seriously cheesy fondue – like thing, boiled dumplings stuffed with cheese, more spinach pikhali (spinach balls with walnuts and garlic), and a decent glass of white wine. Not for the lactose intolerant.

The trout already half devoured before the photo could be taken!

All in all – our initial impressions of martvili were underwhelming, but as we became familiar with the place we realized that there is lots of beautiful nature around to explore, and we really enjoyed our time here! However, with that said, don’t do the canyon / boat ride – deffos not worth it.

Let us know if you end up here, what you ate and what your experience was!

Off the eaten track

Off the eaten track: Ganja, Azerbaijan

July 5, 2019July 5, 2019
by Jono

Let me start out by reminding you that Azerbaijan holds the infamous record of having the world unhealthiest cuisine – finding fantastic, not-too-greasy food out here is a problem 🙈

Pretty much the healthiest part of azari cuisine…

We ended up in Ganja almost by mistake – we knew absolutely nothing about the place other than a pin on Google maps that we’d dropped at some point as a potential stop.

We hitchhiked in, honestly expecting a small, backwater town, and found ourselves gobsmacked by a modern, European city. While the name is deceiving, what it lacks in cannabis it more than makes up for in culture!

This was a famous writer from Ganja, Mizami Ganjevi.

The city is covered in art and sculptures, beautiful public spaces, parks, fountains, cafes, museums to famous poets, shopping aplenty, and even a few quirky things, like the house made from 50000 glass bottles.

The food scene, however, was a bit more tricky to navigate. There are a lot of slightly more upmarket spots, serving Western and international cuisine, and plenty of doner houses that can fill your stomach for R12, but very few of the mid-range good local places we love to find.

TripAdvisor here was virtually useless, as the place gets very few international tourists. The real gem of this town we actually found on Google maps, of all places, and ended up being incredible.

We found an old Soviet themed underground restaurant called Zirzemi restaurant, and its here: M9J9+3X Ganja, Azerbaijan.

The quirkeyness starts when you bang on the iron door and a Soviet soldier with a kalishnikov opens the flap and demands a password. We saluted and said “greetings comrade (Привет товарищ!)” in Russian and that seemed to satisfy him 😂

Everything on the inside was straight out of 1950’s Soviet russia, from the gas masks hanging on the wall, machine guns stacked up next to the door, old radio transmitters and a large vodka collection, down to the waiters outfits – old Soviet war uniforms!

The food however, was excellent. Not at all greasy or heavy, we had 9 dishes, a vodka (of course!) and some sparkling water, for 20AZN – around R160!

We had a strained yogurt with dill, Adjika, a sour milk, rice, tarragon and egg soup (way nicer than it sounds!), fried dumplings, two salads, a plate of lamb wrapped in grape leaves with a garlic yoghurt dipping sauce, a flatbread stuffed with spinach and cottage cheese, a chicken kebab, and a bread basket – all of which were cooked perfectly.

Part of the spread – low light photo unfortunately!

And at the end of the meal, we got to take some photos with the props!

All in all – a fantastic experience, and if you are at all considering Ganja as a destination, definitely stop in! Drop us a comment if you make out here 🙂

Off the eaten track

Off the eaten track: Sighnagi, Georgia

June 30, 2019June 30, 2019
by Jono

Sighnagi was a gem for us – a picture perfect town, set on a hill overlooking majestic plains, with the greater caucasus mountains in the distance.

The prettiest town in kagheti province, this little fairy tale place does see its fair share of tourism, but still manages to retain it’s charm.

Being part of the wine growing region in Georgia does, of course, mean that there are wine cellars and wine bars everywhere – we found these to be a mixed bag, with some real gems, but most of them very overpriced and smacking of tourist traps.

Being a popular spot has its benefits of course, and one of them was that there are plenty of restaurants to choose from.

From all the restaurants in town however, there is one that stands out as being on par with Café Nikolozi in Tbilisi – one of the best restaurants of our entire trip. The name is restaurant SHIO, and its here: 41.618433, 45.922732. This little spot is not on TripAdvisor yet, so was a bit difficult for us to find, but wow – what a treat.

We went there for dinner twice – in total we had our usual salad (twice), a beetroot in plum sauce, fried quail, the most delicious carp we’ve ever eaten, aubergine and walnut rolls topped with barberries, spinach phkali (which were the best we’ve had in Georgia), aubergine and red peppers baked in a clay pot, salmon in walnut sauce and a massive chicken cooked in cream and garlic.

The homemade wine is delicious and cheap, and you can get a litre of it for the price of a glass of wine in Tbilisi!

Everything we ate there was excellent. A family run joint, these guys managed to turn out consistently great food, with an extensive and occasionally surprising menu (cow brains even made it on there).

A massive bowl of chicken in cream and garlic…

The raw ingredients they used were top quality, the portions were generous, and the prices were reasonable – there is really no reason to eat anywhere else if you find yourself in Sighnagi!

Let us know if you make it out there, and what your experience was!

Off the eaten track

Off the eaten track: Yeghegnadzor, Armenia

June 25, 2019June 25, 2019
by Jono

Yeghegnadzor is quite an undiscovered little place, with little information on the Internet. Given that we got lucky and ended up having a wonderful time there, this OTET post will have a little more background than just the usual food scene.

Getting there:

Yeghegnadzor is 120km south east of yerevan along the southern highway to Tatev, and as such is fairly accessible.

Mashrutkas (shared minibus) from Yerevan leave every hour or when full from here: 40.1417665, 44.4948234. Take the metro to Gortsaranayin and walk to the circle. Fare should be 1200amd. We hitchhiked from there, as there are a lot of big vehicles going south.

Where to stay:

I almost never post recommendations for places to stay, mostly because we tend to stay in cheap, nondescript places. However, we found an absolute gem which also happened to be one of the cheapest options around – Arpa Valley Cabins. If you are hitchhiking your holiday this perfect little cabin is bang on the major road, but still has stunning views down the valley. At the time of writing the double room was 7600 amd (R230).

Things to do in Yeghegnadzor:

The town itself doesn’t have much to get the heart racing, but there is lots to see and do in the surrounding area.

The Noravank monastery is the most famous sight nearby, a pretty monastery complex with nice cliff backdrops. Hordes of day trippers from the capital complete the picture. Free entrance.

Very pretty monastery despite the crowds.

Nearby, the Areni-1 cave is an important archaeological site, with an ancient winery (approx. 6000 years old) and the world’s oldest shoe being found there. The guy at the entrance will tell you it’s closed, and refuse to say another word. What he actually means, is that its closed UNLESS YOU ARE PART OF A BIG GROUP – so just wait for a bus or something to pull up and join them if he won’t let you in initially.

There are a number of nice wine farms in the area – we tried to visit the old bridge winery twice, but it was closed both times. There is also a nice winery in Areni which was recommended to us, but we didn’t make it there.

The walk from yeghegnadzor to the historical bridge is a wonderful 1,5 km meander through lovely farmland, best late afternoon and evening. Shaded picnic area at the bridge if you want to do lunch there. Trail is well marked and starts here 39.752677, 45.32812, bridge is here 39.741216, 45.324732.

If you have a car, the Yeghegis valley nearby is beautiful to explore and has an unusually large number of old churches, as well as a Jewish cemetery dating from 1200-1300 AD, and a number of Kachkar, or ancient cross stones, dotted around in random places.

If you are into hiking, we did a lovely hike starting and ending at Yeghegis village, with a loop that visits both Smbataberd fortress and 1000 year old Tsakhatsqar monastery. Both sights were totally deserted (we were the only people there), and were much more special than the overrun Noravank monastery.

Views from smbataberd fortress down the Yeghegis valley

Hike was about 11-12km round trip, about 700m total elevation gain, well marked trail, OSM has the tracks. Start here 39.872275, 45.354791. Fortress here 39.872186, 45.338762. Monastery here 39.89026, 45.354008. End in either valley – we chose to go back to Yeghegis because it was easier to hitchhike to/from (more vehicle traffic driving through).

Where to eat:

The section you’ve all been waiting for! Yeghegnadzor and surrounding has almost no resturants, and the one or 2 that are in town are pizza and beer kind of spots.

There is a food court on the main highway south of town (Google “food court”) which serves up decent portions of cheap food – good for refuelling, with no major surprises.

The real gem of the town however, took a bit of searching – we found a little B&B that also serves up incredible home cooked food, tucked away fairly far into the back alleys of the village. The place is called “Under the Walnut Tree”, Google location is correct, but no signs outside – a big silver gate marks the spot. Feel free to let yourself in and go bang on their front door to demand supper if the gate is closed.

Dinner was delightful, clean, fresh home-cooked food, with not a single dish disappointing. The food was well prepared, not at all oily or heavy, and the host was delightful – if her English was a little rusty it just added to the charm of the whole place. The setting was also very nice – a veranda covered in grape vines, with views over the town.

A set menu for 4000amd got us a fresh, crunchy salad, a green bean mezze of some sort, lavash (paper thin breads), local cheese, tomato and bulgar soup, peas with shredded chicken and yoghurt, a chunky meat with tomato thing that was so tender the meat fell apart, home made compote (a cold fruit tea/drink), bottled water, a fruit basket, raspberry cake and fresh herbal tea to finish.

If you make it to Yeghegnadzor, or discover some gem that we missed during our time there, let us know in the comments!

Off the eaten track

Off the eaten track: Tbilisi!

June 12, 2019June 12, 2019
by Jono

Tbilisi is a wild city – crazy surreal architecture, wine bars everywhere, Thai prostitutes running dodgy massage parlours – this city has it all.

And no surprises – Georgian food is incredible. Walnuts, pomegranate, fresh tarragon, plums, spinach, aubergine, sour cream – these are staple flavours that Georgians love and know how to use. We fell instantly and hopelessly in love with the cuisine.

Phkali – the green ones are made from spinach and herbs with walnuts.

Of course, we had to find those hidden gems that served up the best, home-cooked food!

The first night we did some recon and ate at 2 restaurants in Erekle II st, I don’t remember the names – expensive, but delicious and with the full range of Georgian cuisine. This is a good place to start if you’ve just arrived in the country and have no idea what’s what – all of yhe menus in this street have English translations, and most of them have pictures.

Breakfast was the usual yoghurt and cherries in a park somewhere, but lunch was special – we discovered a very cute little “vegetarian” place called Café Leila opposite the Anchiskhati Basilica – reasonable mid-range café with really good quality food, ultra fresh salads, homemade lemonade with fresh herbs, cheap wine and delicious bean stews and pickles.

Supper however – this is where we really found the hidden gem. Café Nikolozi – the perfect family run joint, complete with hand written menus and a wine cellar in the resturant. The directions on Google are correct, but don’t accidentally go into the restaurant next door – this one is underground down some stairs, and only open for dinner.

No English menus though (suits us just fine) but the family could all speak passable English and damn, could they cook. And they could also fill a glass of wine until overflowing, which was awesome.

We started out with aubergines stuffed with walnuts and topped with pomegranate seeds. Moved onto a herb soup with plums and beef. Smashed some meat dumplings along the way, then tucked into a fresh salad with a delicious walnut dressing, before gobbling some chicken cooked in milk and garlic that literally melted off the bone. Topped all of this off with a glass of aged grappa (chacha), and the whole meal (and drinks) cost us about 45 gel (R250).

Georgia you beauty – we love you!

Off the eaten track

Off the eaten track: Grahamstown

April 23, 2019April 28, 2019
by Jono

So… Close to home! We’ve lived in Grahamstown for more than a year now, and we thought we would explain a bit about where to eat if you come visit!

Grahamstown has quite a few cafes and restaurants for a small town, owing to the influence of the university and all the fancy private schools – unfortunately most of them serve up pretty average chow. Here’s the best of the lot, by category.

Best place for tea or coffee:

Provost Cafe! This quirky coffee shop is built inside the old colonial jail, with the old cells revamped into funky rooms to sit and enjoy a cup. Lots of nice outdoor seating as well, and even a swing! They have a great selection of fancy coffees, and a nice bunch of teas. Ask if the upstairs area is open.

Best salad:

Revelation coffee shop in peppergrove mall serves up MASSIVE salads at breakneck prices – this is our go-to if we do decide to eat out. The summer salad is mental. No jokes. The photo above is their summer salad.

Best takeaway curry:

There’s a curry den downstairs beneath the total garage in Bathurst street – walk into the garage shop, at the back of the shop there’s a door leading to a downstairs area that serves up delicious, wildly hot Indian curry. You can even play pool while you wait!

Best pizza and beer:

The Rat and Parrot is a fairly standard watering hole, but they do whip up the best pizzas in town, if you can stomach all the rugby jerseys and facial hair hanging around.

Best hidden gem:

There’s a tiny restaurant run by a single (Zimbabwean I think) dude inside the Sunnyside Garden Centre, which serves up a decent meal for 2, in a lovely setting, for under R100 (with tea)! Kudos to the chap for being the waiter, chef, manager and dishwasher, and doing a fine job at that.

Most surprising find:

The Ethiopian restaurant hidden in a block of flats next to the Caltex at the top of Bathurst street – duck inside the door next to the petrol station and ask anyone for Injera (Ethiopian teff pancake) – it’s a smasher.

Thats it folks! Let us know if you visit the creative city!

Off the eaten track

Off the eaten track – Mirissa

March 21, 2019April 23, 2019
by Jono

Mirissa! What an incredible place – an unparalleled stretch of beach with hundreds of places to eat, Mirissa really got us excited when we arrived 🙂 Time to go hunting! Read more about Off the Eaten Track here.

The problem with finding food gems in Mirissa was quite simply, the sheer volume of restaurants available. If you are into grilled fresh seafood cooked over an open fire, Mirissa has literally about a hundred restaurants that will do you a stunner of a meal, and being able to sit on the beach with your feet literally in the water is just the cherry on top.

With that said, by the time we’d arrived, we were needing something different, having eaten grilled fish 2 nights in a row. This presented a problem – there wasn’t much variation on the menus here. We had an oily carby dinner one night at Big Belly Roti Hut, which was tasty and filling, but nothing special.

Delicious, local fresh vegetarian food – totally our thing!

For lunch we managed to scout down a fantastic lunch and curry place called Dhana’s curry pot – they serve vegetarian rice and curry buffet for Rs400 – as much vegetables as you want for that price? Amazing!

They had a surprisingly good selection of curries, including 2 types of rice, dal, tomato curry, jack fruit curry, green mango curry, okra, pumpkin, and banana flower curry – all were good, green mango was a tad sour.

The other food gem we discovered was a little café called plantation café in Welligama, on the A2… they had the usual stuff, but also a surprisingly wide selection of other food, and really big, delicious salads – Marna was in heaven 🙂 I had a traditional sri lankan chicken curry in coconut milk, and it was excellent. The chicken was succulent and perfectly cooked, and the portions were generous.

By far the best salad we’ve seen outside Negombo!

If you are planning a trip to Mirissa, do go check out one of the above spots!

Off the eaten track

Off the eaten track – finding hidden food gems!

March 18, 2019April 23, 2019
by Jono

We’ve been wanting to do this for a while – write a post about how and where we decide to eat when travelling.

This is an introduction to a series of posts, each one about a specific town, how we experienced the food, how to avoid tourist traps serving stale overpriced food, and how to eat like a king on a limited budget!

There are a couple of general principles, by no means exhaustive.

Understand the local food culture – this is a very broad statement. Basically what I’m saying here is that you will be able to make more informed decisions about your food choices if you understand what the local dishes are and how much they usually cost. The only way to do this is:
Eat around at a bunch of local places first – this will give you an idea of the general flavours you are dealing with, what you should expect to pay, and what each dish actually is. There’s no shortcut to this one – take the first few days in a country as food research time.
Once you have an idea of what you like and what you’ll be eating a lot of, start being more selective and looking for places that offer something different. Try not to eat the same thing twice until you end up with a menu with nothing new on, by which time you’ll be at step 4 below.
By now you’ll have an idea of the local cuisine, so the key is now refinement – finding the spots that do it exceptionally well or exceptionally cheaply, or that offer you a twist on local flavours – a vegan version of your favourite curry, vegetable juices with unusual herbs, etc. This is the hunt, the difficult part of this exercise, and here we use all the resources available – guide books, google, tripadvisor, local recommendations, etc. We’ve found that TripAdvisor is very useful, but not necessarily for their top choice – finding up-and-coming places with fewer, better reviews is difficult, but rewarding.
Once you’ve narrowed down your choices, take a stroll through town in-between meal times and look at the menus – this is usually the clincher. Think of it as your pre-dinner warm up, get your steps in and earn your supper at the same time!

That’s about it for general principles, upcoming posts will deal with where and what we decided to eat and how we got there!

As a start – go check out where to eat in Mirissa!

Off the eaten track

Off the eaten track in Kandy!

March 9, 2019April 23, 2019
by Jono

The drive to Kandy in our mighty red Tuk tuk from Negombo was a lovely one, going through beautiful hills and rainforest towns, we took it slowly and enjoyed the scenery. Arriving in Kandy we were greeted by crazy, bumper-to-bumper traffic, the worst we’ve seen in sri lanka so far. If you have your own transport, try to avoid mid morning and late afternoon – it’s anarchy.

Our hotel was a non-descript affair in Richmont Hill – slightly too far out of town for our liking, Kandy has a lot to offer so next time we’ll stay closer to the fun. Bags dropped, we headed into town for some exploring!

First thing we did was obviously to grab some fried street snack, wrapped in a greasy piece of sri lankan newspaper – perfect. Having refueled, we then walked into town starting at Bogambara – an old fort now being used as a local veggie market! Marna and I love local markets, eyeballing the interesting fruit and veggies for sale, and maybe trying a few:)

We also discovered an amazing local food joint, just next to the road on the west side of the lake – for an incredible eating experience go here: 07°17′29.95″N 80°38′14″E

Trust me – it’ll blow your mind. There are about 30 stalls selling every kind of sri lankan snack and fast food imaginable, and they are fresh, hot, cheap and delicious.

We then grabbed a whole durian fruit (not recommended, it’s massive) and walked along the promenade on the north side of the lake to eat it – we were there in March, and everything was covered in pink blossoms – unreal.

Feeling slightly sick from all the durian, we walked around a bit in town looking for a good place to have dinner, and eventually found café 1886 – looks fancy on the outside, but the food is delicious, prices reasonable, setting lovely and portions big. Try their low carb grilled fish.

Not a bad plate of food for Rs440 ($2.5)

Day 2 breakfast was at Sri balaji – a chain of south Indian restaurants serving idli and dosa at giveaway prices – there’s a good one in the southbound section of road B519.

A short Tuk Tuk ride Southwest of town got us to the Royal Botanical Gardens, where we spent a lovely few hours eating tropical fruit and wandering around the well manicured grounds.

After Bot Gardens, a good spot to chill for an hour or so is the ceylon tea museum just south of town, which has a tea café upstairs and a small shop selling tea. We managed to skip the museum entrance fee by saying that we just wanted to go to the Restaurant – didn’t vibe another expensive tourist trap, and it was lovely. Hordes of school kids arrived while we were there, which brought loads of energy, excitement, selfies and hi-how-are-you’s to an otherwise peaceful affair.

We then headed to Degaldoruwa temple behind town, which is a cave temple with beautiful hand painted walls and a large reclining Buddha – entrance is free, and in fact one of the local monks had to go get a key to open for us! Beautifully preserved, a wonderful little spot without any touts or popcorn sellers, it felt like a little slice of local Buddhist life.

For one last thing to do while you still have time, grab a coke zero and some arrack and head to the Kandy View Point for the best views over town – also lovely at night if you still have energy after supper 🙂