This is the latest in our weekly Dish Explained series, where we take one dish from one culture and break down what it is, where it came from, and where to actually eat it in Dallas.
Khachapuri is Georgian cheese bread, and the name tells you exactly what you’re getting. Khacho means cheese. Puri means bread. The most famous version, called adjaruli, shapes the dough into a little boat, fills it edge to edge with melted cheese, then cracks a raw egg yolk and a pat of butter right into the middle before it hits the table. You tear off pieces of the crust and drag them through that molten well in the center. That’s it. That’s the whole ritual, and it’s every bit as good as it sounds.
It’s a rare enough dish around Dallas that finding it usually means seeking out a Georgian, Russian, or Uzbek restaurant built specifically to serve it. Bubala Cafe & Grill in North Dallas is the most reliable one. The menu spans the former Soviet Union, plov, pelmeni, borscht, kebabs, and khachapuri sits right at the center of it, made the way a family in Tbilisi would actually make it rather than adapted for anyone unfamiliar with it.
The more memorable version of the trip, though, is in Carrollton. Russian Banya DFW is the only Russian bathhouse in Texas, saunas, an ice-cold plunge pool, the works, and its restaurant, Restaurant Volga, serves a full Slavic feast to anyone who’s just spent an hour sweating it out. Start with khachapuri and a side of ajika, a bell pepper paste built for dipping, then work through vareniki, pelmeni, and khinkali, three different regional dumplings on one table. It’s not a typical Tuesday dinner. It’s also not something you’ll find anywhere else in North Texas.
It’s also back at Carina Pizzeria in Preston Center, just under a different name. The pizza-focused kitchen has started calling it a “cheese boat” instead of khachapuri, the same English nickname a lot of American diners already use for the dish, boat-shaped, cheese-filled, egg cracked in right at the end. Same dish, same restaurant that’s quietly been serving it to a pizza crowd who might never order it if it stayed under its Georgian name.
Either place you go, the dish wants the same thing from you. Don’t be polite about it. Tear the bread, dunk it in the cheese and egg, get a little messy. That’s not you doing it wrong. That’s just what it looks like when it’s done right.
Bubala Cafe & Grill is located at 17479 Preston Rd. in Dallas. Russian Banya DFW and Restaurant Volga are located at 2515 E. Rosemeade Pkwy., Suite 401, in Carrollton.
