Wendy's in Tbilisi, and tomatoes in Greece
What I ate and drank in Tbilisi, Athens, and Hydra, plus your music pairing...
I just got back from a trip to Georgia and Greece, two countries with deep ties to cigarettes and sour, pungent cheeses. On the car-free island of Hydra, I recorded two podcasts from a park bench near the quieter side of its port because my hotel’s Wi-Fi speeds were that of a Motorola Razr (Brat green).
We spoke with British fashion writer Plum Sykes, who told us she locks her phone in the car when it’s time to write, and about her friend called Celerie. I flip my phone face down, the way a cheater might flip a framed photo of their wife down on the bedside table, if you were wondering what I do with my device when I’m “writing.” And we spoke with Honor Levy, whose new book, My First Book, has a chapter that mentions a group of boys who can’t stop talking about how cheap the cigarettes are in Greece. My recording got fucked up for her episode, and I had to use the awful Zoom backup file, which had a digital bird chirping in the background for the entire hour. I decided to leave it in the edit because removing it somehow disrupted the episode’s ambiance. Cigarettes are €4 in Greece, in case you were wondering if I bought a pack.
This was the first trip I’ve taken in a while where I didn’t miss my creature comforts, like high-speed internet and a building with all my belongings. Georgia and Greece are behind us (America) in some ways, but in many ways, being behind us is a place I liked being in. I remember going to Wendy’s in the mall as a child in the late ’80s and ordering a Frosty. The cashier gave my mom her change and walked across the counter to the Frosty machine, loading me up a cuppa that sludge. He then got my attention and, like Carlos Alcaraz on clay, slid that perspiring yellow cup across the entire counter length and straight into my hand. It felt like catching a foul ball without spilling my beer or getting a blow job while wearing sunglasses. Today’s American fast-food experience is a smile-free drive-through just trying to hold on to the last few people who are willing to work there. We spotted a few Dunkin’ Donuts and Wendy’s across Georgia, with billboards advertising Wendy’s new Takis collab.
We never had the chance to pop in and try one on our trip, as we were too busy getting scrubbed down in the sulfur baths and enjoying authentic Georgian food, most of it quite good, and taking shots of chacha, their spirit of choice, which they describe as something between vodka and tequila but made out of grapes. The type of drunk I got off of chacha was clean, clear, and energetic with (somehow) no hangover. That could have been from the healing powers of sulfur and Eastern European blackout curtains, though. I found myself returning to it like a toxic boyfriend who I wanted to “figure out.”
ROOMS, the artfully named hotel group that brought us out, had the smarts to bring in previous How Long Gone guest Frederik Bille Brahe to sort out the restaurant concept at their Tbilisi house. It was nice to find a light piece of grilled salmon with greens and a squeeze of juice from maybe the best lemon we’d had, ever. Simple, ingredient-focused dishes, like a Greek salad, for example, shined in Georgia and Greece because their produce is that much better than ours, even in California, the New York–appointed produce capital of the world. These tomatoes were (obviously) naturally grown, but not on purpose—not even a decision to consider. They’re tomatoes from a time before the flavor bar had been lowered to today’s standards. Before we knew there was a bar to lower.
Our flight from Tbilisi to Athens left around 4 a.m., which is normal in this part of the world. We stayed up and pushed through by partying at the hotel bar, so we were good and drunk once we hit the airport at 3 a.m. What restaurant is open at 3 a.m. at the Tbilisi airport? Wendy’s, of course. The two teenage girls manning an airport Wendy’s in the middle of the night couldn’t be more welcoming and professional. Not since the ’80s or my last visit to an In-N-Out had I seen such genuine pride and happiness to serve cheeseburgers filled with Red-40-dyed sheets of paper sprayed with MSG. They ran that Wendy’s like it was the Georgian Navy.
Frederik (the chef mentioned above) sent me a DM saying that once we land in hot-as-balls Athens, we must hit Diporto, a basement-level restaurant that’s unfortunately become TikTok bait. It’s a vibes- (and cash-) only, reservation-free restaurant serving what they feel like, when they feel like, with tiny anodized aluminum jugs of house wine resting on a takeaway bowl filled with frozen water. The wine never had time to cool down, as we were sipping more for survival than for pleasure.
One table might get simmered sardines, and another might get hand-cut fried potatoes. And I don’t mean hand-cut like In-N-Out’s. I mean a guy in his seventies used the palm of his hand as the cutting board, the way our grandparents did. The best thing we ate the whole trip was probably their bowl of stewed vegetables with a chunk of torn bread to sop up the broth. Elite flavors unable to be duplicated are baked into the ceiling paint and frying pans. A place that doesn’t have time for cross-contamination standards, where surfaces are used to count money, take orders, and chop vegetables. You get the feeling that your bowl of chickpeas in broth would be incomplete without a bit of residue from handling cash. Once you finally grab a table and get your food, it takes a while to let the space calm you down and not look like a TikToker yourself.
In Hydra, there's not much to do but move from chair to water and water to chair. A pork souvlaki and a cold beer for lunch at And Onion, and some whole grilled fish with cold wine for dinner is the program there. Skip dessert and get your leftovers to go. Grab a cup of cherry yogurt gelato at the Cool Mule, and walk back to your Wi-Fi-free room, stopping to feed a stray cat with your takeaway. I’m waking up around 3 a.m. every morning now that I’m back in Los Angeles, which is great for writing but bad for staying awake long enough to see the sun go down. I’ll be experimenting with tomatoes next week if I can find any half as decent as the ones in a Tbilisi petrol station’s produce bin.
Music Pairing
DIIV, Frog in Boiling Water
A combination of summery Siamese Dream–era Smashing Pumpkins with the pink-gray cloud of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless. The last 30 seconds of track two’s “Brown Paper Bag” especially reminded me of MBV’s “I Only Said.” Listen while lying in bed and looking at your phone before dinner.
DIIV is all time.
As a Georgian I’m so glad you got to enjoy Tbilisi! I’ve been itching to go back and explore the countryside again.