Mimino revisited: never enter the same river twice

here is a golden Buddhist rule: never try to recreate the same sensation. You are bound for disappointment because you can never enter the same river twice. I thought I knew better but I did let exactly that happen with Mimino, a Georgian restaurant in London's swanky Kensington. My initial visit was enveloped in warm glow and scintillating sparkle that Olga puts on everything with her magic touch. After a schmooze party at the RBCC we only had time - and available stomach capacity - for sampling a platter of starters and, boy, were they not utterly scrumptious! For months on I was longing to go back. My imagination pictured feasting on the gifts of the Caucasus mountains, full of herbs and charcoal flavours, and washing them down with treacly Georgian wines.

And finally the blessed moment arrived on a chilly December evening. Hot and noisy Mimino packed to the rafters with Russian Londoners and a sprinkling of their local friends, Kirill and Sasha waiting up for us over a bottle of Tarkhun, a tarragon-flavoured soda drink from the Soviet days. As we tuck in the salads platter (სალათები, £15), the frosty chill outside swiftly fades away from our minds: we are in the land of the Golden Fleece, Queen Tamara, the Knight in the Panther's Skin and One Million Scarlet Roses. Certainly a line of associations that speaks more to a Russian than a Westerner.

Sprinkled with ruby-like pomegranate arils exploding in your mouth with sour-sweet juice, this assorted goodness proffers:

• Badrijani - grilled aubergine rolls with creamy walnut sauce;
• Espanakhi - a ball of minced spinach delicately flavoured with herbs so that they do not overpower the strong grassy note of fresh spinach;
  
• Adjapsandali - a ratatouille-esque sauté, served cold, with the accent on the aubergines that really taste grilled;
  
• Pkhali - a leek-and-walnuts ball with a heady fragrance of aromatic herbs;
• Lobio - stewed red beans with walnut sauce, fresh coriander and dried herbs;
• Imeruli khachapuri - fragrant thin-dough flat-bread stuffed with piping hot cheese.

The thick and spicy kharcho (ხარჩო, £7) soup made from lamb, rice and finely chopped vegetables has a nice kick and a good tomato-based flavour. It is certainly one of the most known Georgian gastronomic exports to Russia, a staple of many a factory canteen and street corner café. Our demure and taciturn waitress Elena adds to kharcho a few pieces of delicious home-made rye bread that is not on the menu.That's because Sasha and Kirill are friends with her.

With the arrival of the mains, however, all this culinary exuberance turns into a culinary non-event. A huge flop, to put it straight. Floyd who's never quick to criticize food murmurs that the mains have no flavour at all. No, nothing is bad enough to send back to the kitchen but nothing is a match to the divine starters. I cannot believe they came from the same kitchen.

Tsyplyonok tabaka (წიწილა ტაბაკა, £12) is another Georgian dish probably more popular in Russia than in its country of origin. It comes in the shape of a quail-sized chicken generously salted, flattened and fried accompanied by a heap of deep-fried matchstick potatoes, the ideal shape to absorb grease. No wonder they taste like starch ampoules bursting in your mouth with the unmistakably smelling mini-fountains of frying oil.

Kalmakhi (კალმახი, £12), a battered trout, salty as the Black Sea that licks the balmy shores of Georgia, arrives with a tablespoonful of mashed potatoes and an equal quantity of sliced cucumbers and tomatoes. All as bland as a roll of toilet paper.

Mtsvadi (ქაბაბი, £15), is the Georgian shish kebab gently flavoured with liberal amounts of salt. I start suspecting that all this salt abundance could very well be management's ploy to trick us into ordering more drinks. Who knows. Georgian barbequed meat is famous in Russia as shashlyk, the most popular weekend picnic fare. Here it tastes just slightly better than if it were made by a bunch of not very sober Moscow office workers at a weekend corporativchik (a company-sponsored team-building event involving colleagues in a countryside setting). The sides of pickled cabbage, fried potato wedges and a tablespoonful of salad are just as forgettable.

The only animating feature that, to a very slight degree, redeems the lacklustre mains is classic Georgian tkemali (ტყემალი), a dip made from tart cherry plums alycha: refreshingly sweetish-sour but invariably same for chicken, fish and meat. Unknown parties seem to have strongly impressed upon the owners that customers might very much enjoy their conversations completely drowned out by some seriously loud noise. So half an hour into our dinner, a keyboard-and-crooner duo starts churning out Russian pop hits and criminal ballads adding a note of demi-monde decadence to the already deafening din of voices and clanking cutlery. We have made sure to ask for a table "as far away from the band as possible" but in Mimino's petite dining hall there's no escape from this post-Soviet cultural ambassador. Back in Russia this obligatory song-and-dance routine used to annoy the bejesus out of me, but these days I have learnt to laugh it off as a quirky and mildly entertaining post-Soviet "ethnographic" flavour.

Kinzdmarauli, a saccharine red wine made from the endemic Georgian Saperavi variety was allegedly Stalin's libation of choice. It used to be a big hit in the former Soviet republics, sold in Russian supermarkets in 5-litre boxes at quite a premium price - until a spate of hostility between Russia and Georgia found Georgian wine imports halted. Its syrupy mellowness with not a wee hint of tannin is quite a departure from your regular European-style red, owing to grapes for Kindzmarauli being harvested later than for any other wine, when they are fully ripe and, perhaps, even frost-bitten. I imagine that it probably tasted the same when the Argonauts visited Colchis, an ancient Georgian kingdom in their search of the Golden Fleece, so here it is really part of the 'authentic experience'.


Pro's: Splendiferous starters.
Con's: Highly disappointing mains. Noise levels on busy nights. Great place to replenish your salt levels.
In a nutshell: Come on a weekday when there is no minimum charge per table and no band to torture your ears. Order the salatobi platter, you won't regret it. Skip the rest.