Picture a post-Soviet Italy influenced by the Middle East in the depths of the Caucasus Mountains and you have Tbilisi, Georgia. For travelers to this capital, a great way to understand the city’s modern sensibilities and its renewed pride—after freeing itself of Moscow’s governance—is to visit an “art-cafe,” where Georgia’s true identity flourishes.
These cafes are more than hangouts overrun with laptops. Energetic young people fill the spaces, which serve quality food and drink and showcase top local art. The result: the cafes have the kind of welcoming, open atmosphere that’s characteristic of Georgia’s lauded hospitality.
These spots exemplify the culture better than any museum. However, they can be hard to find. Concealed in courtyards and unsuspecting corners, here are 10 places to find the best of Georgia’s art-cafe culture.
1. Art-Cafe HOME
While most cafes display artwork on the walls, Art-Cafe HOME—a converted three-story house in Tbilisi’s old city—integrates it into the building itself. The library is covered in pages from books that demonstrate how they chose the Georgian language over Russian. Soup ladles, tea mugs and dried peppers decorate the walls of a kitchen-turned-sitting space to exhibit Georgia’s rustic and proud culinary tradition. Stop in and ask approachable owner and creator Giorgi Kekelidze about HOME’s genesis. He will tell you about his father’s artwork that lines the walls and the ceiling, and how he rescued it from the fate that most local art suffers—being locked away in storage, without buyers or the opportunity to be seen on an international scale. On a typical evening, bartenders mix house cocktails to funky music until HOME’s underground nightclub Ground Zero opens, where a DJ spins among glow-in-the-dark murals. Grab some coffee or gazpacho the next day to help cure your pounding post-rage headache.
2. Prospero’s Books and Caliban’s Coffeehouse
After weathering the literary censorship of the Soviet Union, it’s fitting that a hidden bookstore is a mainstay in Tbilisi cafe culture. Wander through a gated tunnel off Rustaveli Avenue, the main shopping street, and pick up a book at Prospero’s to help you decipher the strange loops that make up the Georgian language. You’ll also find books relevant to the region, like Wendell Steavenson’s Stories I Stole about the author’s decision to leave Time magazine in London to move to Georgia, or Mikail Eldin’s The Sky Wept Fire, which documents the author’s time as a reporter in the Chechen War. The coffeehouse at Prospero’s, Caliban’s, imports green coffee beans directly from Columbia, Indonesia, Kenya, Brazil, Haiti and India and creates their own blend and custom roast. Tables and chairs fill the quiet courtyard that provides resting place for a coffee and book after a busy day of sightseeing.
3. Moulin Electrique
Moulin Electrique makes an excellent hideaway for a writer working on their next great manuscript beside a tall glass of red wine. The straight-backed wooden chairs, round tables and converted library card catalogs push a Paris Bohème meets mysterious Georgian arabesque. Painted-on placemats and unfinished walls provide the perfect backdrop for planning the next countercultural revolution. The Saperavi, a dry Georgian wine made from red grapes native to Georgian soil, makes an excellent and inexpensive compliment to hushed patio conversations about the local art that decorates Moulin Electrique’s walls.
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