Soup not war
Two Bowls, One Table: Georgian Chikhirtma Meets Armenian Spas
The kitchen at Nino's Supra on Marylebone High Street is small and loud and smells of tarragon. I went on a Tuesday, which is the right day for chikhirtma. Nobody is performing anything on a Tuesday.
Nino ladled a bowl of it without asking. Pale gold, almost translucent. Chicken pulled into long careful threads, saffron doing quiet structural work underneath, the egg-and-vinegar liaison giving the whole thing a kind of warm tension. Not drama. Tension. The way a good teacher holds the room.
Across the table I had brought a container of spas from Ararat Kitchen two streets over. Cold matzoon soup, wheat berries, dried mint, a little butter floated on top. The two bowls could not have been more different in temperature or intention, which is exactly why they belonged together.
Chikhirtma is a soup that thinks. It doesn't shout its herbs. It waits. Spas, by contrast, is already at peace before you sit down. Yogurt has already done its work. The grain is already soft. Eating them in sequence felt like watching two different meditation traditions arrive at the same conclusion by separate roads. Which, gents, is more or less what Judea herself was doing in the first century. An Eastern province, plural inheritances, one table.
Some people will say yogurt soup and tarragon broth have nothing to say to each other. I find those people at the gym, watching the clock between sets, and I feel for them. The contemplative disciplines teach us that contrast is the argument for patience, not against it. The pot holds opposites. That is its entire job.
Nino's chikhirtma is the kind of thing that makes you want to move slowly for the rest of the afternoon. The spas from Ararat made me want to sit completely still. Together they made me want to stay at the table until someone asked me to leave. Nobody did. It was a Tuesday.
One small note on the spas: the mint was dried rather than fresh, which is traditional and I respect it, but the ratio was slightly heavy on the this particular batch. Not a complaint. A observation. The wheat berries were cooked exactly right, which is the harder skill.
The chikhirtma had no weaknesses I could find.
The Rating #
Chikhirtma: 9.1 out of 10. A broth of genuine contemplative restraint, technically immaculate, with enough saffron to justify the quiet confidence. Spas: 8.4 out of 10. Cooling, grounding, and honest, held back only by a touch of mint imbalance in a single serving on one afternoon.
Vendor #
Chikhirtma from Nino's Supra, Marylebone High Street, London. A Georgian kitchen run by two sisters who do not take reservations and are right not to. Spas from Ararat Kitchen, also Marylebone, a small Armenian canteen that operates at its own pace and is correct to do so.
One table, two kitchens, no casualties. That's the only scorecard that matters here. See you at soupnotwar.com.
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