Your reviewer’s only previous visit to a Georgian restaurant was a disappointment. The passing of time and a desire to be open-minded provoked a recent visit to a new venue purveying Georgian cooking. It was well-conceived, but ultimately underwhelming.
For any restaurateur, the decision to locate your first London outlet on Fitzrovia’s Charlotte Street is a bold one. What you may gain in footfall, you will lose in competition. It’s debatable even how novel the Kinkally concept is. Sure, the traditional Georgian dumpling – or kihnkali for the uninitiated – is the centrepiece, but the restaurant talks about how it draws on neighbouring influences across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. In other words, it’s a bit of everything, where authenticity plays second fiddle. All the dishes are intended for sharing. Obviously. And the décor is decidedly minimalist, keeping with the modern vibe surely encountered at multiple other venues on the street.
Kinky, the downstairs bar (and a memorable abbreviation of the venue’s name) was where my dining comrade and I began the evening. It was also, arguably, the best part. The servers mixed and delivered their theatre competently and their take on a negroni hit the spot, admittedly once a large mouthful of unnecessary coriander verbiage had been navigated. With cocktails consumed, we did not, however, leave Kinkally’s subterranean realm. Despite our very polite insistence and the fact that my dining comrade had made our reservation some time ago, there was zero flexibility on the part of the staff to accommodate us in the more convivial upstairs area. Our downstairs choices then were a table by the toilet, a table normally intended for drinks, where we would be seated side-by-side, or one close to the kitchen. We opted for the latter and at least got to see the kihnkali in preparation, even if our experience was interrupted by regular openings of an adjacent door.
Not the most auspicious of starts left us hoping that the food might redeem itself. Sadly, this was not the case. The menu is a minefield that requires lengthy, tedious and sometimes repetitive explanation. Yes, I like beef tartar but have no idea what its accompanying kindzmari might be. Is a merguli khachapuri a piece of meat, fish or even a local vegetable? What’s satsebeli or matsoni? You get the idea. Arguably the questions might be moot, since almost every dish we tasted failed in the most basic of ways: a lack of seasoning. Add a bit of spice, or even just plain old salt and pepper and many of our plates would have been elevated. Apparently Kinkally’s best-selling dish is its baked aubergine and rightly so. It contained flavour and depth, presumably owing to its length of cooking. Beef tongue and braised lamb were, by contrast, not only unmemorable but also largely unrecognisable. And what of the kihnkali? Our two plates – of rabbit foie gras and portobello mushrooms – looked better than they tasted. The latter was particularly undermined by its overly rich sauce. Most damningly, we still felt hungry after our initial flight of dishes. Pudding provided no upside, but the evening was redeemed by both wine (a decent Rully) and conversation. The venue’s days may be numbered.