Tag Archives: cheese

The Weird and Wonderful things about Georgia

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With its fabulous food, stunning scenery and charming ways, Georgia is without a doubt a great place to visit. It’s cheap, very cheap, and – just to top it all off – it has some weird and wonderful oddities, that I thought only right to share.

1) Wine: The Georgians make plenty of their own vino… A lot of it tends to be sweet (even the red wine) but perhaps more surprising than that, is the ingenious lengths they go to when bottling the stuff. It is commonly found in huge vats resembling vegetable oil and in strange little goblin bodies. The Mongoose was determined to drink all the goblins under the table.

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2) Cheese: Any country where the ‘weird and wonderful’ list begins with cheese and wine is a wonderful one in my book. But nevertheless, the Georgians deserve a special mention here for the sheer amount of cheese they eat. This dish was served, bubbling and sizzling in its deep pan and as it was placed on the table our waitress declared it loudly and proudly: ‘Cheeeeeeeese!’

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Huge quantities of cheese are seved with almost everything… Their national staple is Khachapuri, which is basically a cheese pie in a deep crust, served with half a block of butter and two fried eggs on top. I kid you not.

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3) COWS!!! Yes, this list gets better, I hear you cry. Georgia literally has hundreds of cows – and sheep – roaming its streets, causing traffic to stop. They are beautiful and should be worshipped.

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4) Hygiene: Georgia gets a special mention for its cleaning products sounding downright dirty. Especially its barf cleaner.

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5) Loo roll: Confession – on my first day in Georgia I went without using any toilet paper at all as I just couldn’t find any in our hostel bathroom. It later transpired that this bandage-like object is actually the bog roll. Yes, it’s a tad scratchy.

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6) Statues: Georgia has weird and wonderful statues all over the place. They are not shy of a bit of gold and elaborate statues of the golden fleece and whatnot often look fairly incongruous to their surroundings, just like the one at the top of this post which was taken in the coastal town of Batumi. Here’s a few more:

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7) Ferris wheels: From the highest point in the crumbling, old town of Tbilisi to the sea level of Batumi, it costs less than a £1 to ride the Georgian ferris wheels which, we concluded, is a delightful way of seeing the surroundings.

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8) Toasting: Georgian toasts are incredibly long and will leave you holding your glass in the air for long enough to wonder if you should put it down again. But at the same time they are often wonderfully thoughtful and poignant. The traditional feast is called a Supra, and each Supra will have a Tamada, a toastmaker, who will lead the toasts throughout the meal. It starts with a toast to God and peace and then moves onto everything from plans and dreams to absent friends. Oh, and did I mention that you have to down your drink at every toast? One person is always given the role of ‘merrykeeper’ whose job it is to keep everybody’s glasses full at all times. I think it was appropriate to scream: ‘Keep me merry!’ at him throughout the evening.

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The Tea Trolley, Nottingham: Giving even more ‘reasons’ to eat

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I’m sure you’re all more than aware by now that I do not need ‘reasons’ to eat. If I’m honest, sometimes I tuck into some delicious looking fodder when I’m not even hungry, I just really fancy it. My hips and my wallet get most upset when this happens, but I’m not sure it’s something I can really control.

But now I have discovered a little place, just a stone throw away from where I work, that has given me yet even more ‘reasons’ to eat.

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The Tea Trolley in Chapel Bar has only recently opened and is a quirky little room that feels more like someone’s living room than a cafe. It has a sort of 1970s tea-cosy feel to it, with spoon backed wooden chairs and a handful of little round tables. In fact I felt like I had walked right into the cafe scene of Withnail and I.

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But that’s not my new ‘reason’ to eat.

Flicking through the menu I was impressed. The cafe has a great list of lunch options – salads, sandwiches, paninis, soup – but with some really nice (and cheap) variations. Take the Italian panini for example, thick sliced vine ripened tomato, homemade basil pesto and torn mozerella, freshly made for just £2.50. The soup of the day just £1.50. My friends, this little gem of a place undercuts the Boots lunch deal.

I opted for a jacket potato with cheese and beans, for £2.50. Randomly this is often a meal I crave at work and I have sampled a number of jacket potato eateries across the city. Many are very good but most are just takeaways, served in polystyrene containers dripping with bean juice – and while I’m at it – come with a plastic fork that snap at the first hurdle of crusty potato skin.

This, on the other hand, came on a plate, with proper cutlery, and was served with a good portion of REAL MATURE cheddar cheese. Nothing makes me more angry then a potato with that awful mild, rubbery stuff piled up on top. And I mean nothing.

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Phwoar, would you look at the cheese on that?

It was a great jacket potato. But that’s not my new ‘reason’ to eat.

No, no, behind the funky interior of the cafe – and its good, mature cheese – lies something even cooler. The Tea Trolley is actually a social enterprise.

It is run by South Notts College and Mencap and gives people with learning difficulties the opportunity to work and earn a NVQ in catering. So while you scoff on your afternoon tea (£10 for two I seem to recall), the people serving you are earning some genuinely valuable life skills.

And surely even my hips and wallet can’t argue with that.

BrewDog Nottingham – A Must for all Beer and Cheese Fans

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Having lived in Nottingham for the best part of 10 years now I tend to get quite excited when something new opens that is a little bit different. I did it about Coco Tang (shotlived), Tilt cocktail bar (go!) and Spanky Van Dykes (thoroughly recommend). However, I think I might have just made the most exciting discovery yet. And its name is BrewDog.

A couple of people had mentioned it to me and there were excited whispers running around the office this week: “New bar’s opened. Makes its own beer”, that sort of thing. And so yesterday, on a cheeky afternoon off, Matty and I went and checked it out.

I found it on my favourite Nottingham street (Broad Street) in the old Shaw’s building, which is a pretty cool building in itself. The interior has a funky minimalist feeling with exposed brick walls, wooden floors and traditional 1930s style filament light bulbs, hanging naked from the ceiling.

Enough about the decor. We made our way to the bar to be greeted with a very impressive selection of beer. Rows of uniquely labelled bottles lined the fridges while a big chalk board on the wall above listed the ales on tap. My eyes flicked around like a magpie that had accidentally flown into a jewellery shop.

I have to confess I don’t know a great deal about “proper beer” – despite the fact that my work once sent me on a beer tasting course in a desperate bid to culture my lager-loving ways. Determined to keep a lid on my Stella and Sauvignon Blanc habit, I just meekly said: “Do you have anything golden?” Well that brought the bar man to life. His eyes lit up and he said: “Everything we have tastes golden” and I knew then, me and the BrewDog, we were going to work.

He went on to explain that all the beers are very “hoppy” with more hops than your average beer to bring out the different flavours. A consequence of this is that some of the beers are very strong – ranging from about 5% right up to the Anarchist Alchemist which is a whopping 15%. Our Aussie bar man explained the beers were brewed for flavour – not for the strength, and that was just a mere consequence of the process. Skeptical, that anything that strong could really taste of anything but Special Brew, he proceeded to give us a sample. And wow, it was wonderful. Resembling something more like a liqueur than a beer, it was sweet and bursting in flavours, and left my chest with that warm glow not dissimilar to the brandy-effect. Nevertheless it was only 4pm on a Friday so after sampling a few of their best sellers, I opted for the 5am Saint (5% ABV) while Matty went for the Punk IPA. Mine was a delicious rum coloured number – and please excuse the lack of appropriate beer tasting prose here – but it almost tasted fizzy, it was the perfect temperature (colder than normal ales) and had a bit of a sweet aftertaste to it. Yum. Matty’s was more of a pale ale, which was slightly drier.

We took our drinks over to a little booth and started planning what we were going to have next. It’s the kind of place that makes you want to sample everything on offer. Perhaps due to the strength of the beers, they were served in schooners (an Aussie sized beer which is about 2/3 of the size of a pint) and later, when I ordered the New Zealand Hardcore (9.2% ABV) it was served in a half. But the drinks are so rich and flavoursome that actually you don’t drink them half as fast as you would a lager or a pale ale, so the size is perfect. Personally, I love a good schooner – often think a pint can feel too big, going a bit flat at the end if you don’t drink fast enough, while a half is little more than a thimble. Yes the Schooner is the Goldilocks of beer glasses for me.

BrewDog also offers food matching advice for all of its beers and sells a selection of small bites. Feeling peckish we ordered a small cheese and meat board (£5) and were not disappointed. A far cry from the regular board of cheddar, stilton and brie often served at fridge temperature, this board was a little bit special. Yes there was a soft French cheese, which may have been brie, but it was so beautifully mature and so “ready” that it was oozing a little bit. It was joined by two other deliciously mature cheeses that shamefully neither of us could recognise but were wonderfully nutty in flavour.

So there you have it. A winning combination. Oh and girls, if you’re single, it seems to have a rather large male clientele – that weren’t all bad looking either. Right, I’m off for a beer.