Georgian dining at Marani

Small, family-owned restaurants usually have the advantage of offering personal, warm service. They employ just a few servers who soon get to know their regulars, intimate atmosphere and have fresh food that comes fast, given their small seating capacity.

The Marani cafe bar in Pechersk is just that. It is situated on a side street off Lesya Ukrayinka Boulevard (once you cross Kutuzova Street), across from the Kyiv Institute of Technology and Design.

Marani, which means wine cellar in Georgian, is owned and run by a chess playing Georgian who once taught chemistry at New York University. The place beckons the pedestrian to enter its underground eatery through large glass, no-fuss, rectangular doors – the scene of any entrance to a well-stocked wine cellar. My wife particularly noticed a row of banged up, metallic buckets containing dimmed yellow light bulbs hanging above as we descended the staircase.

We were met, as it turned out, by our soon-to-be waitress and seated immediately as soft Georgian shanson played unintrudingly, mostly love ballads from what we could decipher based on the tone of the male’s soothing voice.

The cafe is divided into smoking and non-smoking areas, the former seating 12 buttressed by a bar counter and high stools, with the latter seating twice as many including a private, curtained booth for up to four.

A fake fireplace giving out a constant red glow was situated in the center of the far-side wall in our non-smoking area. The interior had neutral off-setting colors of red-tan, greenish-blue, and plenty of tiles affixed on the walls. Small, wooden mantle pieces hung ubiquitously, on which Georgian trinkets such as horns, knives, old kitchen tools, and other items native to the Caucasus region were strategically placed.

The menu offers authentic Georgian food and the fare is unpretentious if not basic: plenty of cold vegetable-based hors d’ouevres, Georgian soups, veal, pork, lamb and liver shashlyk, fish dishes and salads containing the obligatory Georgian ingredients of nuts, peppers, garlic and herbs, and a compact selection of red and white Georgian wines.

This was a welcome divergence from the thick menus offered at many of Kyiv’s restaurants where much time is wasted sifting through pages, remembering what you want and on which page, only to discover that the items you choose are unavailable that day. Then you have to start the process all over again while a mental debate begins as to who is more frustrated – you or the server waiting to take your order.

Already familiar with Georgian food in Kyiv, which is quite good given the disproportionate number of Georgians living here (as opposed to Moscow where every corner has a venue offering cuisine from the Caucasus), we were quick to choose and share the following dishes. For starters, egg plant with walnuts (Hr 35) which were curiously coated with dried curry spices and topped with pomegranate and filled with minced garlic. The cheese lover I am, I opted for the Mengrel Khachapuri (Hr 34), which is a thinly crusted, lightly buttered pie filled and topped with a slightly salted goat cheese, and had the Chakhokhbili Soup (Hr 28), a tender chicken soup with eggs whipped in vinegar and a transparent light meat broth flavored with garlic, parsley and fennel. My wife and I then ordered a round of pork and veal shashlyk (Hr 46 and Hr 44, respectively), which arrived straight off the brazier, tender, and topped with marinated onions and parsley and accompanied by a spicy homemade (not store bought) nutty Satsebeli sauce (Hr 7) loaded with tangy herbs. A medley of grilled vegetables (Hr 40) complemented the meal: mushrooms, onions, eggplant, tomatoes and zucchini. For some reason they were doused with oil and spices which proved too salty and were superfluous. The entire meal was washed down with a semi-sweet Georgian red wine from the Alazani Valley (Hr 150) in eastern Georgia, where the climate is warmer so the Rkatsiteli grapes grown there are sweeter than most Georgian wines. This particular wine had light fruit tones and a straw color that darkens as the wine ages.

As expected, the service was personable and fast, given the fact that we were the only ones dining there on this late Sunday afternoon. The prices were surprisingly democratic, as the term is used in Kyiv to mean cheap. I can’t wait to return for a larger feast and have no fear of over-ordering and not being able to settle up.

Marani cafe bar (1 Nemyrovycha-Danchenka (Pechersk metro), 280-04-53). Daily 11 a.m. till 11 p.m.

Menu in English: No

English-speaking staff: No

Average meal: Hr 120