Askili Orchard Offers Modern Georgian Cooking in NYC

"When I visited Askili Orchard on Sixth Avenue soon after it opened, I found a spacious wood-and-leather dining room with a central 12-seat table and a rose-hip tapestry opposite the open kitchen; chef Maya Toria uses fruit as an undercurrent throughout the menu—kiwi in a green salad, a fig-mango salad with ginger dressing that transitions to mains, and rolls shaped like rose hips served with strawberry butter—and she reimagines condiments (peach-forward adjika made creamy with walnuts) and classic Georgian dishes (a minted balloon of inflated mozzarella that's popped tableside in a take on gebzhalia). Her signature crab-filled khinkali arrive wrapped in squid-ink dough topped with salmon roe and served with passion-fruit sauce, and her khachapuri work includes a delicate imeruli with an apple-tomato condiment and a popular gluten-free khachapuri dough; she soaks proteins in Borjomi, ferments and pickles in-house, makes tomato concentrate from scratch, offers about 55 sauces, and even opens at 11 a.m., when I recommend the chicken kespé with homemade egg noodles and a warm roll." - Tammie Teclemariam