By Prof. Giorgi Pkhakadze, MD, MPH, PhD · 15/09/2026
The kitchen of Upper Svaneti was shaped by three things: winter, which lasts six months at 1,500 metres and more; isolation, which meant that what could not be grown or kept in the valley was not eaten; and work — herding, hauling, building with stone — that needed feeding. The result is a small repertoire of dishes that are dense, salty, hot and very good after a day on a mountain, and that most visitors meet for the first time in a Mestia guesthouse with the fire going.
Kubdari
The national dish of Svaneti is a pie: a round of bread dough, thin, filled with chopped beef or pork — chopped, never minced, in generous pieces — mixed with onion, garlic, Svan salt and a handful of the mountain spices, sealed, and baked on a griddle until the crust is crisp and the meat inside has cooked in its own juices. It looks like a khachapuri and is nothing like one. A whole kubdari is a plate across; one is a meal; the pieces are eaten with the hands and the juice runs down the wrist. There is no vegetarian version and nobody has ever asked for one.
Svan salt
Svanuri marili is the flavour that runs through everything. Coarse salt pounded with garlic and a set of dried herbs and spices — blue fenugreek, coriander seed, dill, marigold, red pepper, and, the one that makes it Svan, gitsruli, a wild mountain caraway — into a damp, fragrant, greyish-green mixture. It goes into kubdari, onto meat, into soups, onto tomatoes and cucumbers at the table, onto boiled potatoes, onto bread and butter. Every family makes its own and every family’s is correct. A jar of it is the best thing to carry home from Svaneti, and it keeps for a year.
Tashmijabi and chvishtari
Tashmijabi is mashed potato beaten with a great deal of fresh sulguni cheese until it stretches from the pan in ropes — a dish you serve with two forks and a warning. Chvishtari is cornbread with cheese folded through it, fried, crisp outside and molten inside. Both are eaten at breakfast, at lunch, and at any hour a guest arrives.
The rest of the table
Boiled beef with garlic sauce; petvraal, a cheese pie without meat; matsoni, the thick yoghurt, with everything; honey from the alpine meadows, dark and strong; and in place of wine — there are no vines at this altitude — chacha, or a glass of Rachuli red brought up the valley, or, in the guesthouses, the ubiquitous Georgian lemonade. Svan meals end with tea and a plate of the honey.
See it with GTour
Every dinner on the Mestia & Ushguli tour is in a family guesthouse, and kubdari is made in front of you on the first evening; a jar of the family’s salt is usually pressed on you when you leave.
This story in Georgian — ქართულად: shenidasveneba.ge
ქართულად: ქუბდარი და სვანური მარილი — მთის სამზარეულო
