We are talking with the owner of Rusiko, Warsaw's most famous Georgian restaurant, about khinkali, wine, feasts, toasts, and why it's worth putting authenticity first in everything you do.

Tomasz: We are meeting in your restaurant on Tuesday at three o'clock. The dining area is full of guests. One cannot fail to notice that more and more establishments that serve Georgian cuisine are being opened in our country. What makes Georgian cuisine so popular among Poles?

David: They got to like it thanks to tourism. Travelling to Georgia has been in fashion for the last 10 years or so. Poles are opening up to flavours and in general they have become curious about foreign cuisines. However, it was not always so. I remember my beginnings in the late 1990s, when I came to Poland, it was difficult to get even coriander - it was nothing short of a miracle. Now many Georgian spices are generally commercially available, which proves that this cuisine has been adopted. It is completely different from European cuisine, but it can be accepted by all nations because Georgian cuisine is diverse and universal.

Tomasz: And which things from its repertoire do Poles dislike?

David: It's probably offal, which is associated with the Polish cuisine of the communist era. Back then it was, excuse me for saying so, food. We eat, for example, tripe and various types of sausages served hot with a filling made of offal, but they have not caught on in Poland. Yet, I don't give up, Apart from our classic menu, created together with my mother; I try to be flexible and always serve something new to get guests used to it and educate them. Poles, of course, have their favourite flavours and like their food to be adapted to them, but they are also very curious about these original, authentic experiences.

Tomasz: What is your attitude to the issue of modifying and making classic Georgian recipes Polish?

David: My goal and mission is to convey my culture to Poles in the most authentic way, but there are certain points where we have to make compromises. This is, for example, the level of spiciness of dishes and the way they are served. You love dumplings of all kinds, including our famous khinkali, although they are completely different. They contain stock which is made from the juices seeping from the meat and vegetables while they are cooked. You have to eat them with your bare hands. A dilemma then arises, because we would like them to be consumed in this way, but we cannot deprive guests of the opportunity to use a knife and fork. However, we set an example, we teach our guests how to do it in an authentic way and they are happy to try it.

Tomasz: Speaking of khinkali, what do you do with the tops?

David: You generally don't eat them, because there's a bit of undercooked dough there. There's a joke in Georgia that those who eat the tops don't want to admit how many dumplings they've eaten, because the tops can be easily counted (laughs).

Tomasz: What are the famous feasts, so characteristic of your country's culinary culture?

David: You could say that it is a meal brought to the rank of a ritual. It is an important event that I grew up with. I try to practice this custom whenever I can, although I rarely have time.

In Georgia, what goes on around the table is colourful to the eye. We have a lot of small, labor-intensive appetizers, the details of which require exceptional craftsmanship. They take up most of the space on the table. Then come the main courses and there's an extraordinary pile-up of dishes. I had a big family and in the country, where our big house was located, there were always guests. The feast would begin, breakfast would turn smoothly into lunch, dinner, and then breakfast again. Those were crazy days.

There is a bit of a fetish in these feasts, because a lot of food is wasted. It's a strange phenomenon, and I wonder if it's always been this way, and if it wasn't better managed in the past, in harder times.

Tomasz: A feast and table also means wine and toasts. Georgian toasts. I've heard they can last up to a few minutes ...

David: Sometimes even a dozen or so minutes, but the point is not to chatter for half an hour, because people soon stop listening. My grandfather, who was famous for being a tamada and leading the feast, used to say that a toast expresses spontaneously what's in your heart.

“It doesn't matter whether the subjects of the toast are beautiful women, friendship, world peace, the toast should include the intelligence of the one proposing it. Then the feast is beautiful, because it is not merely devouring, but a feast must give person emotions.”

It happens that in a restaurant I will propose a toast to the guests and thus express my gratitude and joy at their arrival. Sometimes one of them will pick up the theme and propose a toast himself ...

Tomasz: You are a restaurateur who is known for being in your restaurant a lot, who likes going out to the guests and talking to them. Do you treat the restaurant as your home?

David: I have asked myself this question many times. Rusiko is not just a place of business, it's a lifestyle. Of course, I like to approach tables, but I don't want it to seem like some sort of round. Sometimes it is enough to open the door to someone, say a few words when saying goodbye and it will stay in your heart more clearly than a conventional chat.

"Running a restaurant gives me satisfaction and great opportunities. Within 6 years I have met outstanding, interesting people who will go down in history not only of Poland but also of the world."

I have had the privilege of hosting such figures and talking to them face to face, man to man. It is something great, almost unimaginable, to drink coffee in a small back room with someone like Baryshnikov, Olbrychski, Zanussi.

This place was created from ruins, and on the foundation of my own experience, with my own needs in mind; I had to build my house on them. That is why I cannot treat this as just a job. For me, Rusiko is a new and important phase of my life, which I created together with my family. My wife Olga is not from the catering industry at all: an ethnographer by training, she represented her country by working at the Lithuanian embassy and held senior positions in large corporations. My mother was a doctor who worked for 22 years at the oldest institute of gynaecology in Tbilisi. The dishes we have presented here are the result of her experiences and travels. She travelled to our relatives, to Abkhazia, where she cooked beef in walnuts with her aunt, or to Imereti, where she cooked chachapuri with another aunt.

It was my wife who came up with the idea of naming the restaurant after my mother. And that is how Rusiko was created with the participation of these two wonderful women. It has been a great success and in Poland Rustico is associated with Georgia, with our cuisine and our atmosphere.”

Tomasz: You set up the restaurant in 2015 and straight away in the same year you won an award for the best diner?

David: It was Mr. Maciej Nowak's last 'pub of the year' plebiscite that, so to speak, discovered me. During the last years of the 10th-Anniversary Stadium's existence as a bazaar, I had two containers in one of the alleys occupied by the Vietnamese, in which I fried shashliks. It was a wonderful place. Maciej Nowak got there at 6 a.m. and then wrote an article about me in the Gazeta Wyborcza. From that moment on, I became known in the industry, and then I was nominated for a plebiscite in which we won in all categories! It was a great emotion; Olga chickened out and broke her heel at the last minute, so I went to the event with my late mother. It's wonderful that Warsaw welcomed and appreciated us in this way.

Tomasz:You are not resting on your laurels. You have set up a hotel and a winery in Georgia…

David: I have always dreamed of doing this. Fortunately, I had the energy and the means to do it. My grandfather was a winemaker and a very interesting character. I remember from my childhood that he used to live and breathe wine. He loved it and was the best at making it. However, he didn't leave me much knowledge. After the war he had the first wine pump room in the old part of Tbilisi, where you could sit, eat bread and cheese, drink wine and only wine. Eminent people, artists, writers, politicians came to this place. On the centenary of his birth, in 2018, I set up a wine bar and named it after him. Marani Elizbar.

Tomasz: What distinguishes your wines from others?

David: Georgia is the cradle of wine, the oldest place where it was made. We have many endemic strains that do not grow anywhere else. The production methods are also different: the traditional vinification takes place in qvevri, or traditional clay amphorae. The wine also matures in the qvevri. And it is this direction, appreciated by UNESCO that I would like to promote. I will not chase after the New World or Europe. They have their wines, why should I follow their way at home? I have to promote my style, although I take into account that not everyone may like it. But these are unique wines and you can fall in love with them. Individuality will always win. If we have Georgian wine, it can be labelled with a mark of origin or a quality mark: I want my wine to be associated with the latter as well. I won't be able to conquer the mass market; my wines won't be in discount stores. I have few bottles, they are not cheap and I only produce 5,000 bottles a year. But they are good: I will always represent my country in that right, true, essential way. I love making wine: every year I go to my winery in Kakheti to see to the fermentation process. This month is absolutely intense and special for me.

Tomasz: Next to the restaurant there is a carpet shop that you run. Where did this idea come from?

David: Carpets have always been present in my life. I grew up among them; they have affected my imagination since I was a child. I'm a visual learner: by looking at the shapes covering them I saw various stories, I created fairy tales. I also had a neighbour, a carpet merchant, who I loved to visit. I came to Poland with three carpets, later my collection grew to over 100, and it was a constantly changing arrangement, a decoration of the place. At one point, my wife found out how many of them I had, and she argued that they would make us go bankrupt. But I was lucky, because one day one person came to me for dinner, and after a short conversation it turned out that he was the owner of several palaces. The next day he came and bought all the carpets that still adorn his beautiful properties. Needless to say, my wife was pleased (laughs).

Tomasz: Where do you get these carpets?

David: They are all antique and hand-knotted, each at least 100 years old. I belong to a group of carpet traders, carpet collectors. I get in touch with real nomads, who go to different countries, for example Pakistan, Afghanistan, and they buy the carpets, usually in villages, outside the cities. Besides, in Europe there is quite a large second-hand market: at one time, at the beginning of the 20th century, you couldn't imagine a house, a chancellery, a library without a Persian carpet. Many people get rid of them because they treat them like old, useless stuff, and they go back to clever hands who know what to do with them. But the fashion, and therefore the demand for them, is coming back. They are now often combined, and with great effect, even with modern interiors.

Tomasz: You are a restaurateur, chef, hotelier, winemaker, and a carpet merchant. What are your other talents?

David: would love to build something. I am an under-educated historian of architecture and interior design. In Tbilisi, when I finished school and applied to the Academy of Fine Arts, the war broke out and I had to leave. The winery and the house in Georgia are of my own design. I once drew the design on a napkin and when the late Michał Borowski, a prominent architect, was dining in my restaurant, I proudly placed the napkin on the table. He looked at it, then at his wife Marysia, and then said to her: "Let the man come to us tomorrow, we will make a decent architectural project for the Georgian, because this house will collapse". Then Michal made the project for me and I realised it. I now have many ideas in my head, but I have to proceed with their implementation slowly, with caution. I don't want to do everything at once: I'm the one with the crazy ideas, and when it comes to serious implementation, Olga is the one who watches over me. We make a good team.

Tomasz: Thank you for the interview

Text: Tomasz Zielke
Photos: Jakub Wilczek