Cheesy breads headline big Georgian flavors at tiny Saqartvelo in Van Nuys

At Saqartvelo in Van Nuys, baker Nini Qutidze stands in view behind the tiny restaurant’s ordering counter, forming dough into seven versions of made-to-order Georgian breads. Watching her calm pace — cutting, rolling, sprinkling and layering various shapes, hauling sheet pans in and out of the oven — soothes the primal brain, like staring into flickering campfire.

Saqartvelo is run by a small group of women, led by Ketevan Urdulashvili, who all grew up in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia where the architecture and the cooking blend Indigenous traditions with centuries of colonizing Persian, Turkic, Soviet and Russian influence. When I ask Qutidze, the gamest of her colleagues to speak English with an inquisitive customer, about how they decided on their menu of nearly 30 items, she shrugs and gives me an honest, universal answer: “We chose dishes that are popular and delicious.”

For restaurants in Los Angeles serving cuisines such as Mexican, Chinese, Thai or Japanese that extend from the city’s deepest-seated communities, one might hope for micro-regionality or first-person specificity. We have few true Georgian specialists, though. Thumb the pages of Carla Capalbo’s “Tasting Georgia,” a definitive cookbook and travel guide on the country’s ancient food and wine cultures, as a primer on the small nation’s astounding topographic breadth.

Speaking from the pre-streaming era, sometimes a greatest-hits collection can be a masterpiece of sequencing and narrative, rather than a retread of played-out anthems or a randomly compiled playlist. That’s how it feels to dine among the shelves of folk-art dolls and jars of plum preserves at Saqartvelo. If you’re new to Georgian cuisine, it’s an ideal immersion experience. If you’re familiar with its stews, dips, dumplings and of course its breads, you’ll find heart and intention behind the repertoire.

Qutidze spends hours of her days sculpting Georgia’s most photogenic culinary export, adopted by many of L.A.’s Armenian-owned bakeries and restaurants: Adjaruli khachapuri, the open-faced, cheese-filled vessel, tapered like a canoe and finished with an egg yolk and baton of butter for stirring into the molten center. Qutidze contours hers with especially pronounced tips to resemble handles. I stave off the impulse to grip them like an Olympic triceps bar. I rip them off instead, swiping each through the briny, stringy-smooth cheese lava.

I have a decadelong obsession with Adjaruli khachapuri, and the ratios of this one — the relatively compact and not too bready size, the sharp crackle of the crust, the degrees of salt and tang in the buttery, melded cheeses — make it my current reigning favorite across Los Angeles.

Inside tiny Saqartvelo in Van Nuys, where the cozy dining room might be quiet for weekday lunch but can be packed on weekends. (Rebecca Peloquin/For The Times)

A khachapuri lesser seen in local restaurants is the Guruli variation, named for the Guria province in western Georgia, filled with hard-boiled egg and stretched into a crescent. Qutidze is circumspect about the specific blends of cheese she uses, but the mix takes on here more of a ricotta quality, and the effect is of a mini-calzone with surprising lightness.

To veer from dairy, look to lobiani, the other category of ubiquitous stuffed bread instead filled with seasoned kidney beans smashed to a creamy-coarse puree. Racha, a highland region of northwest Georgia stretching through the Greater Caucasus mountains and famous for its smoked pork, lends its name to Rachuli lobiani, which I prefer for the charry depths the meat imparts among the flaky, bean-flecked layers.

Among these nuanced creations, Qutidze most frequently pulls oval loaves of unadorned table bread from the heat, crusty and plush and designed for dunking. They’re served scorch-your-fingers hot alongside brothy stews, the most compelling of which is called chakapuli. Submerged herbs sway in the bowl like seagrass meadows. Cubes of diced beef hide among the greenery. The first spoonful is a ricochet of tarragon, which grows rampant in Georgia in the springtime — and is why chakapuli is closely associated with Orthodox Easter. Its aniseed nip gives way to subtler flavors: white wine and a dash of tkemali, the plum sauce that illustrates the sour-sweet tensions endemic to the cuisine.

Beef and tkemali are the same building blocks for kharcho, a wintertime stew running as a frequent special. Tomato and rice add heft. The sunny specks shimmering through the cloudy mass? That’s khmeli suneli, a Georgian spice blend that typically includes dried marigold petals, blue fenugreek and coriander seed among aromatics like dill, basil and marjoram. Its inclusion is meant to enhance, not overwhelm, the way a healthy pinch of garam masala might finely warm the flavors of a dal.

I’ve been to Saqartvelo during a Friday lunch hour when it’s only me and the staff, and on weekends when every table is full and I’m the only person not speaking Georgian. I watch groups taking turns running hunks of bread through plates of pkhali — garlicky, walnut-based dips bright with beet or spinach — and then, when their order is ready, retrieve platters heavy with boiled khinkali, the soupy dumplings bundled with ground pork and beef stung with onion, their wrappers pleated to resemble sun rays.

Beet pkhali, a classic Georgian dip that includes ground walnuts and pomegranate molasses, left, and tabaka, chicken served slathered in the restaurant’s excellent adjika.

The diners begin by dusting each of them with salt and pepper from khinkali-shaped shakers. They bite off a small portion near the dense, twisted knob of dough at the top (which they eventually discard) and drink out the hot broth before consuming the rest. I’ve had khinkali around the city that flop into puddles. These hold their structure without being too thick or leaden.

Svanetian salt, a seasoning in which marigold petals are again a key ingredient, stain a snack of fried potatoes a color of orange that’s two shades paler than a traffic cone. I follow the cues of other customers and dot them with red adjika, a textured red chile paste. A side of adjika arrives in a small cup, generous enough in size to invite experimentation. During my most recent lunch, I stirred a blotch into the cheesy core of my Adjaruli khachapuri. A smokiness emerged from among the adjika’s capsicum heat, and its garlicky tones amplified.

Big plates come out with boiled khinkali — soupy dumplings bundled with ground pork and beef, their wrappers pleated like rays of the sun.

(Rebecca Peloquin/For The Times)

I stood up and distracted Qutidze from her baking with another question.

“Is it common for Georgians to add adjika to Adjaruli khachapuri?” I asked.

“No, no,” she replied. “It’s for potatoes and meats. I mean, if you like it, that’s OK, but … .”

Well, then. I confess my heresy, but I also won’t deny its deliciousness.

(Rebecca Peloquin/For The Times)