Adjaran

Adjara is the slice of Georgia that touches the Black Sea — a humid, subtropical strip wrapping the port of Batumi. The local kitchen here looks Georgian on the surface and Turkish-Anatolian underneath: courgette, eggplant, citrus, and Black Sea fish join the more familiar walnut-and-cheese repertoire. The dish that put Adjara on every traveller's map is Khachapuri Adjaruli — the boat-shaped bread brimming with melted cheese, finished with a knob of butter and a raw egg yolk you stir into the cheese at the table. It looks ridiculous and tastes obvious, in the best possible way.

Away from the famous boat, Adjarian cooking is more humble. Achma is a labor-intensive layered cheese pastry that pre-boils the dough sheets before baking them in cream and butter — Georgia's only real lasagna analogue. Borano is melted cheese in butter, eaten with bread. Sinori is dough strips with cottage cheese. The diet was historically built on cornmeal (mchadi cornbread accompanies almost everything) and the Black Sea fish that ran close to shore. It's the most overtly fatty regional cuisine in Georgia — and the most addictive on a cold morning.