Savor Khinkali by Candlelight at Philly’s Most Evocative Georgian Restaurant

Khinkali with mushroom at Kinto / Photograph courtesy of Kinto

The bar at Kinto is empty on a Thursday night, but that’s not strange. It’s a BYO — no liquor license, no cocktails or glasses of rough Eastern European wines — but I sit there anyway because behind the bar, the owners have built a kind of diorama of miniature balconies.

They cover the back wall — candlelit, flickering, windowed with colored glass, built with awnings and delicate railings. It’s a street scene from Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. So I sit for a minute, waiting on friends, trying to imagine all the miniature lives behind those miniature windows in this miniature version of a Georgian night.

Later, in the dining room, we will eat plump khinkali soup dumplings until our chins are slick with broth. We’ll ask the server what his favorites are because on a different night, I asked a server for a suggestion and was shown the way to fried corn cakes, rolled into balls and dragged through a smooth orange puree of roasted carrots, ground nuts, garlic, and coriander that was so delicious I now dream about it when I’m eating other things. Tonight, this server says satsivi (chicken in a walnut cream sauce, thickened with Georgian grits) and kebabs over fried potatoes garlanded with roasted, sweated onions that are so soft they’re almost a liquid. Again, we aren’t steered wrong.

There are several types of khachapuri, of course: a small version of the classic Adjaruli with its bread bowl of molten cheese and raw egg on top, and Imeruli, like God’s own version of pizza — a soft crust, barely crisp on the bottom, baked and stuffed with slightly sour, stretchy Georgian cheese. The penovani version here, however, is new to me. Cheese and bread again, but the cheese is softer, curdier like ricotta, and folded up in an envelope of flaky pastry served like a gift meant to be torn with your bare hands and eaten while still hot enough to burn your fingers.

From inside the dim and cozy front dining room, you can watch people turning down the alley that leads to Kinto’s door, discovering the place for the first time. It’s an old-fashioned way to find a restaurant these days, but still the best. And to stumble on Kinto on a quiet, cold night — to sit inside in the soft light, wreathed in the smells of hot cheese and roasted onions — is to understand that the true magic of Philly as a restaurant town will never have to do with awards or fame or lines out the door, but with soft nights like these, watching the lights flicker in the balconies of an imaginary Tbilisi, waiting for friends to arrive.

3 Stars — Come from anywhere in Philly

Rating Key
0 stars: stay away
★: come if you have no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America

Published as “Khinkali by Candlelight” in the March 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.