Barbarestan: a menu rebuilt from a 19th-century cookbook, and what 1,600 diners make of it

The kitchen works from recipes in a nineteenth-century cookbook attributed to Duchess Barbara Jorjadze, adapted by chef Levan Kobiashvili and cooked with local produce. The restaurant is run by a family, and the dining rooms are dressed to look like a private apartment rather than a dining room. That is the pitch, and reviewers who enjoyed the evening tend to describe the food as unlike what they had eaten elsewhere in Georgia.

Across more than 1,600 reviews the score is 4.6 out of 5, and the restaurant ranks 42nd of over 2,150 places to eat in Tbilisi. Recurring compliments are the cooking, the service, the wine list and the room itself. That is a strong position in a city where the competition is both enormous and cheap, and it has held over a large number of reviews rather than a promising handful.

Three complaints repeat. Price is the loudest: some reviewers report bills above a hundred dollars a head, which in Tbilisi puts the place in a different category from most of the city. Service is described as inconsistent — excellent in most accounts, brusque in a minority. And several diners find the cooking rich and heavy, which is a fair warning for a long menu of historic dishes eaten late in the evening.

The address is 132 Davit Aghmashenebeli Avenue, and the listing gives opening hours of 10:30 to 23:30 daily, with reservations advised, private dining available and live music at times. If you are hosting clients or family and want one Georgian meal that is an occasion rather than a refuel, this is a reasonable choice — book it, and keep a cheaper second option for the following night.