Chito Gvrito

while walking back home on 3rd ave the other day I saw something familiar. a restaurant named chito gvrito. as in the 1977 song “chito grito chito margerito, da” by vakhtang kikabadze? i walked closer and peered at the menu. indeed it was georgian. I knew my armenian boyfriend from dilijan was coming later this week and nailed down a time on our calendars to try the place. (and as an interesting aside the last time my boyfriend and I ate georgian food together was at the georgian feast in beijing)

chito grito is a song made famous by the 1977 soviet film Mimino. In short its about a georgian man named mimino from a little pastoral town called telavi. he flies helicopters between villages but dreams of being an international pilot. he ventures to moscow where he meets ruben (played by iconic frunzik mkrchyan), an armenian from dilijan. its important to note that dilijan has the second best water in the world, behind san francisco. through a series of name confusions and mishaps the two caucusus brothers find themselves in sticky situations. mimino becomes the pilot he always dreamed of being flying around the world and getting the girl along the way, but he is homesick. So homesick, that he finds his way back to telavi, happily flying helicopters at home. 

 i had two georgian uber drivers sequentially once. i would try to muster some amateur georgia facts to impress them. the first guy lit up when i mentioned “sakartvelo”. the second guy my brother and i encountered on our trip back from brighton beach. we were between mouthfuls of genatsvale kabob (a georgian place recommended by my armenian teacher, coincidentally) when we met khvicha. we discussed ivanishvili and russian meddling in politics and why his family chose to come here three years ago from tbilisi. i had to pounce on that. “my boyfriend flew here from tbilisi. he’s armenian from dilijan. have you been there?” he seems confused so i try to help. “its the armenian town from mimino.” that seemed to work — he smiles and nods — “i know, i know.”

we then finally went and tried chito gvrito (the restaurant). The tldr is we were both pretty ambivalent about it - we both really loved the mushroom khinkali but were a bit surprised at their “half portion” of two (2) khinkalis. the chito gvrito khachapuri took its americanization of georgian pizza a little too seriously. But they did played charles aznavour which we loved - couldnt hold back the reference of armenian-georgian friendship, far away in the post-soviet wall holes of new york city. 

listen to “chito grito” 

and you can watch mimino on pretty much any russian pirating website.