Cheeseboat Daddy
🇬🇪 GEORGIA / HISTORICAL: Permanently Closed.
🇬🇪 GEORGIA
📍 Redondo Beach, South Bay
EDITOR'S NOTE: This home business is no longer in operation.
📸 All photos by Jared Cohee
for Eat the World Los AngelesHISTORICAL ARTICLES are brought over from eattheworldla.com to make sure our Substack content is constantly growing and as full of depth as possible. These will never be behind the paywall.
📆 Original Article 06 July 2022Just in time for summer, residents of the South Bay and others who like to take their sun and sand days in the Beach Cities have a new option for food pickups before days out. A new home-based operation in North Redondo Beach makes it very convenient to hop off the 405 and grab meals before heading to any of the beaches.
Up until now, the only place to find this national dish of Georgia in Southern California was to find it on the menu of Armenian restaurants, cooked by people who have also gone mad for khachapuri. And indeed you can find it on the streets of Yerevan just as much as you do in Tbilisi or Batumi. But in Georgia, the country’s inflation is recorded by an index measuring the cost of making khachapuri!
Most versions of the dish around the country are named for the region where they come from, including the two available here. Since the business likes the term "cheeseboat," which has been used in English to expand the popularity of the dish, it is smart to start with the namesake adjaruli khachapuri (above), which is always served in the shape of a boat. The history of this boat has a few different origin stories, but it does come from people who were sailors on the Black Sea.
When you ask for a pickup, they will time the baking perfectly with the breads coming out of the oven right at your selected time. It is best to come prepared with at least a fork or something to stir with, as the freshly cracked egg needs to be mixed into the lake of butter and salty cheese. Once on the beach, at your preferred eating location, or even in your car, tear off pieces of bread starting at the ends and dip into the mixture to pick up as much as you can shove in your mouth.
Cheeseboat Daddy has also started offering two types of pkhali, a dish that has various ingredients depending on the chef but that always revolves around walnuts. There is a beetroot pkhali that turns out bright red of course and this green spinach pkhali (above left). The flavors of garlic and onions pervade the creamy vegetable side, but neither as strong as the spinach and especially the walnuts.
While the adjaruli naturally stands on its own, the pkhali is perfect to accompany the imeruli khachapuri (above right and below), the version the chef compares to pizza when describing the menu. Inside of this bread (and quite a bit sneaking out when it comes hot from the oven) is the salted cheese from the Imereti region of Georgia.
Use a pizza cutter to slice this up into four or six pieces, or bring some kitchen shears if you are headed to the beach, it is almost the perfect snack. It seems the chef has also started to offer megruli khachapuri, which is like an imeruli with more cheese tossed on top before baking.
As this business grows and gains popularity, it is likely that many write-ups or posts on Instagram or TikTok videos with cheese pulls will end their coverage asking a question like “Who’s Your Daddy?” This website will not be doing that. Wink emoji.
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