Adjaruli khachapuri is the boat-shaped one: an open canoe of bread flooded with molten cheese, topped at the last second with a raw egg and a knob of butter that you stir into the whole thing yourself, at the table, while it steams. It comes from Adjara, the Black Sea corner of Georgia around Batumi. Of all the cheese breads you’ll meet here, this is the one to order first.
The shape isn’t decoration. Adjara is a sailing coast, and the dish is read as a little boat: the dough is the hull, the cheese is the churning sea, the golden yolk is the sun going down into it. Georgian food writers credit the Laz, the seafaring people of that coast, with the original.
First thing to do when it lands: stir it
Here’s where most first-timers freeze. The plate arrives, the egg is sitting there glossy and raw on a lake of bubbling cheese, and people either eat around it or try to slice the whole thing like pizza. Don’t. The second it hits the table, take a fork and fold the yolk and the butter down into the hot cheese until it breaks, blends, and turns one even, glossy colour. The residual heat of the cheese cooks the egg as you go. Skip this and you get a puddle of plain cheese with a cold yolk sliding around on top.
Then the eating. Tear off one of the two toasted points at the ends of the boat — locals sometimes call them the ears — and use that torn crust as a scoop, dragging it through the center. Work your way in from the walls, and save the butter-soaked strip along the bottom of the boat for last, because it’s the best bite and it goes soggy if you leave it too long. One rule beats all the others: eat it hot. Cheese that was silk at minute one turns to a rubber band by minute ten.
How it differs from imeruli and megruli
Three names show up on nearly every menu, and they are not the same bread. Imeruli is the round, sealed disc — cheese hidden inside a flat pie, no egg, the everyday one Georgians eat most. Megruli is that same round shape, but with extra sulguni melted over the top as well, so it’s cheesier inside and out. Adjaruli is the odd one out: open, boat-shaped, and the only one of the three built around egg and butter.
The filling is a blend, usually of two cheeses: curdy imeruli for body and stringy, salty sulguni for the stretch and the melt. If you want to know what those actually taste like before you order, our Georgian cheese guide breaks them down. And if the menu itself is the problem — half of them are only in Georgian — the how to order Georgian food guide covers the words you need. Adjaruli sits inside the bigger picture in our Georgian food guide too.
Where it’s best in Tbilisi
Ask a Georgian where to get the real thing and they’ll point you toward Batumi and the Adjara coast, where it was born. You don’t need to make the trip. Tbilisi does it well, and a few kitchens do it seriously.
The name that comes up most is Retro, at 1 Davit Gamrekeli Street. The owner, Gia Agirba, is from the Adjara coast and has built his reputation on this one dish; Culinary Backstreets calls his acharuli patented, and the kitchen fires the boats in a brick oven (open 11:00–22:00, checked September 2026). Ask for the tsomamoclili version if you find a standard one too bready — it’s the same filling with less dough. For something more central and reliable rather than destination-worthy, the Machakhela chain has branches near Rustaveli and Freedom Square and is a safe default, per Wander-Lush’s 2026 Tbilisi guide. Puri Guliani on E. Tatishvili Street currently tops the crowd-voted acharuli ranking on OnlyFoods, and Sakhachapure N1 is the convenient pick a short walk off Rustaveli.
Our advice: if you only get one adjaruli in Tbilisi, spend it at Retro. The coastal-specialist kitchens beat the do-everything Georgian restaurants at this specific dish almost every time, because a place that lives or dies on one bread has no bad nights with it. A general restaurant with a forty-item menu is dividing its attention; a boat specialist isn’t.
Price, and how big it really is
Budget ₾15–30 for a standard adjaruli in Tbilisi in 2026, with tourist-strip spots and the fancier kitchens sitting at the top of that band and neighbourhood bakeries at the bottom. That’s the price of one boat, and one boat is a lot of food. A single standard adjaruli is a full meal for one properly hungry person, or a shared starter for two who are also ordering khinkali and salads.
Two people who each want their own? Order two. Splitting one leaves you both wanting more, and it’s cheap enough that there’s no reason to ration it. Where portion size does bite you is the family-size versions some places offer — an adjaruli the length of your forearm, meant for a table of four, not a couple.
The variants worth knowing
- Extra egg. Plenty of menus let you add a second or third egg. Two is genuinely better — more yolk to bind the cheese — but three tips it into overkill.
- Light dough (tsomamoclili). Less bread, same molten center. The move if you came for the cheese and not the carbs.
- Mini. Some cafes and bakeries sell a small single-portion boat, handy when you want to taste it without committing to a full meal.
- No egg. Rare, but askable if raw egg isn’t your thing — though at that point you’re close to a different bread entirely.
One last thing that will save your first attempt: don’t order it as a side to arrive alongside everything else. Adjaruli is a fresh-from-the-oven dish and it waits for no one. Order it on its own or as the clear headliner, clear a space for it, and eat it the moment it lands — everything about it is built for the first five minutes.
Do you eat the raw egg in Adjaruli khachapuri?
Yes — but it doesn’t stay raw. You mix it straight into the piping-hot cheese, and the heat sets it as you combine the two. It ends up more like a loose, custardy sauce than a fried egg. Nobody eats it sitting on top untouched.
How much does Adjaruli khachapuri cost in Tbilisi?
Reckon on ₾15–30 for one in 2026. Casual bakeries and workaday cafes charge the lower figure; sit-down restaurants in the tourist zone and the specialist kitchens land nearer the top. A single order feeds one big appetite.
Is Adjaruli khachapuri vegetarian?
The classic recipe is — it’s just bread, cheese, butter and egg, no meat. The only catch for stricter diets is that some Georgian cheeses are set with animal rennet, so ask if that matters to you.
What is the difference between acharuli and adjaruli khachapuri?
None. They’re two spellings of the same Georgian word, transliterated differently — you’ll see “acharuli,” “adjaruli,” and “adjarian” all pointing at the identical boat-shaped bread. Order whichever the menu prints.
Featured image: Photo: Maksym Kozlenko / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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