As you step in Barbarestan, it feels that the old town meets modern Tbilisi, the bustling metropolis of Georgia. You get a chance to discover forgotten but authentic Georgian food in a cozy setting with a mix of soft-lighted lampshades, laced tablecloths, and vintage crockery, which I later learned were also bought from a flea market. 

Barbarestan excels in concocting a juxtaposition of familiar and unique seasonal, local ingredients and cooking techniques, such as salmon on a bed of black (from octopus ink) vermicelli and an elevated version of a tomato salad -- Georgians do love their tomatoes! What caught my palette that most is a soup called tutmanji. Even googling the term only results back to Barbarestan. An authentic dish from the southern region of Samtskhe-Javakheti, tutmanji is a hearty soup filled with hand-made noodles and creamy chicken broth. Instead of croutons, they use beer pops -- one that is crispy on the outside and pops lightly in your mouth like those pop rock candies I once devoured as a kid. 

Traditional Georgian restaurants usually don't have many seafood selection in their menu even though the western part of the country lies on the Black Sea. For a seafood lover, Barbarestan offers a surprising take on salmon that can be paired with a semi-sweet white qvevri Georgian wine. In all of my travels, I've never had such an intricate, multi-textured dish from the soft cream on top of the fish to the crispy vermicelli on the bottom. Its memorable, intriguing presentation and flavors remind me of diving deep into the dark blue abyss with fishes swimming gracefully around a thorny black sea urchin.