The interior walls of Kitchen Bon are painted a fiery orange. The restaurant is set back, inlaid like a jewel into Kostava, one of Tbilisi’s main avenues, and when open it glows invitingly amid the concrete – easy to miss, if you’re not looking. Chi, the owner, and her sous chef Kana gracefully navigate the small square open kitchen, lined on two sides by stools and countertops, deep-frying tempura, spooning rice, folding nori, pouring beer from a tap. An ever-present Stolichnaya vodka bottle stands beside the rice cooker, beading in the heat. Chi is sarcastic, warm, quick-tempered, funny. Her regular customers address her in tones of mingled fear and admiration; she’s one of those people you reflexively want to impress.

Mtkvari, the local name for the Kura River, divides Tbilisi. Until the launch of Fabrika – a disused Soviet-era garment factory turned into a trendy social-space-cum-hostel in 2016 – few gentrified souls from the city’s fancier shore crossed over to the left bank. Fewer still stepped out further than the central Marjanishvili neighborhood, making it past Dezerter Bazaar – the throbbing gastronomic heart from where most of the city’s fresh produce and meats originate. This is also where Leonid Chkhikvishvili buys fresh cuts of meat each morning for his restaurant Duqani Kasumlo, located even further north on the left bank in Didube. Here is a neighborhood where few travelers tread, except perhaps to quickly pass through to catch cheap intercity mashrutkas (mini-buses). But despite its overlooked location, Duqani Kasumlo has acquired semi-cult status for its kebabs in an area better known for its cluster of home improvement stores and the labyrinthine Eliava market, home to hawkers of used car parts and construction materials.

We returned to Tbilisi in 2002 with the intention of staying one year. On that first day back, our friends took us to a chummy brick-walled cellar in Sololaki. There was enough sunlight coming down through the door to illume low pine tables and seating for fifty people max. In a refrigerated counter, menu items were displayed: beef tongue, tomato and cucumber salad, assorted cheeses, badrijani (sliced fried eggplant stuffed with a garlicky walnut paste), all the standard stuff. It was a Georgian greasy spoon, for sure, with a kitchen that would make a health inspector shudder, but the khinkali were really good, and the house wine was as decent as it comes. The name of the place was Dukani Racha. Little did we know people had been coming here for decades.