Shkmeruli

Shkmeruli takes its name from the mountain village of Shkmeri in the Racha region, where it's said a local cook first pan-fried chicken and finished it in a sauce built almost entirely on garlic and milk. What began as a regional specialty spread across Georgia and became one of the country's most requested restaurant dishes, ordered as often for the sauce as for the chicken itself. The technique of pressing the chicken flat in the pan, sometimes under a brick or a second skillet, is what gives shkmeruli its crisp, deeply browned skin, a method shared with dishes like Italian chicken al mattone. The sauce is deliberately simple: garlic cooked gently in butter so it never turns bitter, then loosened with milk or cream until it pools around the chicken. Restaurants often serve it still bubbling in a clay pot, with extra bread on the side specifically so nothing goes to waste on the plate.