10 Adjarian Dishes You Can Only Learn to Cook at Guest House Akutsa

Restaurants in Batumi serve Georgian food. Almost none of them serve mountain Adjarian food — the dishes that come from villages like ours, cooked the way they have always been cooked, by people who learned them the same way we did: watching a mother or grandmother, not reading a recipe. Our culinary masterclass is built around ten dishes you will not find on a menu anywhere else. Here they are, and what makes each one worth learning with your own hands. --- 1. Borano — The Dish That Defines the Highlands Pressed local cheese melted in hot water until it pulls into long threads, then burnt butter poured over the top while it's still hot. It sounds almost too simple to be memorable. It isn't. This is the dish every guest asks us to make again before they leave. --- 2. Sinori — Layers of Dough, Walnut, and Patience Thin sheets of dough, fried and stacked with crushed walnut, garlic, and matsoni between each layer. It takes real technique to get the layers right — something you only learn by doing it with someone who already knows how. --- 3. Achma-Khachapuri — The Mountain Khachapuri Eight to eleven layers of boiled dough, cheese, and butter, built up like a savoury lasagne and baked until golden. This is the dish reserved for honoured guests in Adjarian homes — and it is almost never attempted by visitors, because it looks harder than it is. We'll show you exactly how. --- 4. Iakhni — Beef, Walnut, and Saffron Slow-braised beef finished with ground walnut and local saffron (zafrana). The kind of dish that improves overnight, which is why we often make a double batch during the masterclass — so you can taste it both fresh and the next day. --- 5. Adjarian Chakhokhbili — Chicken With Rice and Walnut The classic Georgian chicken stew, reimagined in the mountains with a cup of rice and crushed walnut stirred through. The result is closer to a thick, fragrant soup than anything you'd recognise from a Tbilisi restaurant menu. --- 6. Malakhto — Green Beans With Wild Grape Vinegar Young beans dressed with walnut, herbs, and isrimi — the sour juice of unripe grapes, which we press ourselves in season. This souring agent is the detail almost nobody outside these mountains knows about. --- 7. Pkhal-Lobio — Black Beans and Wild Spinach Black beans cooked separately from dark mountain spinach (kezhera), then combined with walnut and garlic. A dish built entirely from what grows on this hillside — nothing imported, nothing out of season. --- 8. Chirbuli — Mountain-Style Eggs Tomato cooked down with whatever herbs are fresh that morning — tarragon, savory, coriander — with whole eggs cracked in at the end and left to set gently, never stirred. We make this most mornings for breakfast, and guests in the masterclass often ask to learn it first. --- 9. Qaisapa — Dried Plum and Walnut Dessert Dried plums simmered soft, topped with crushed walnut, sugar, and burnt butter. Sweet, slightly sour, and completely unlike any dessert you'll find outside a mountain Adjarian kitchen. --- 10. Rdze Halva — Milk Halva Milk and sugar, slow-simmered for two to three hours until it turns deep caramel and thick enough to cut. Traditionally made for young men leaving for military service — two pieces kept, unwrapped, until they came home. We still make it the same way. --- Why Learn These Only With Us These are not restaurant recipes. Most of them are not written down anywhere — they were passed from one cook to the next by working alongside them, which is exactly how our masterclass works. You are not watching a demonstration. You are in the kitchen, hands in the dough, cooking the dish yourself with guidance from someone who learned it the same way, in this same kitchen, years ago. --- Join the Masterclass Duration: 2–3 hours Price: 50 GEL per person (only for guests staying overnight at Guest House Akutsa) You choose which dishes to focus on — we'll build the class around your time and interest. Telegram: @raultsintsadze WhatsApp: +995577225289 Website: akutsaresosort.ge Guest House Akutsa — Village Akutsa, Keda Municipality, Adjara, Georgia 40km from Batumi