Aghmashenebeli Avenue, Four Stops, One Afternoon

Aghmashenebeli Avenue gets described as "the Left Bank of Tbilisi" by people who have not spent much time on either bank. Ignore the framing. What the avenue actually is: a kilometer and a half of restored Art Nouveau facades, a pedestrianized stretch that gets crowded by 6 p.m., and, if you know which four doors to open, an afternoon of eating that beats anything a food tour sells, at about a third of the price. Here is the route. It runs south to north, takes about four hours with reasonable discipline, and costs around 90 lari for two people. Do it Wednesday through Saturday: the wine bar is dark Monday and Tuesday, the bakery is dark Sunday.

Start at the southern end, just off Marjanishvili Square, at Winery Ezo. It is a natural wine bar in a courtyard behind an unmarked green door, and the reason to start here rather than end here is simple: the pourer, a former sommelier from Kakheti, is sharpest before the evening rush. Order the qvevri flight, not bottles. Three pours, 28 lari, and he will tell you plainly which of the forty open wines are past their best this week. That honesty is the whole value of the place. Take the rkatsiteli with skin contact if it's on. One flight only. You have three stops left.

Ten minutes north on foot. Duqani Mtis Kari is a family khinkali room with eight tables and a queue that looks worse than it is; it moves in fifteen-minute waves because everything is made to order. Order the kalakuri, five per person, nothing else. The broth inside tells you the dough was made this morning, because day-old dough goes slack and leaks in the pot, and theirs never does. Eat them by hand, leave the topknots on the plate, count them like a local. Skip the fried version entirely. Frying khinkali is what kitchens do to yesterday's dumplings, and you should treat it as the confession it is.

Between stops 2 and 4 you will pass Café Palermo Georgia, a large terrace with laminated menus in six languages and a man outside inviting you in. The pastry case looks persuasive. It is not. The khachapuri comes out in four minutes, which means it went in frozen, and the "homemade" ponchiki are delivered from a commissary on Tsereteli. Walking past a full terrace feels wrong. Do it anyway.

The finish line is Tone No. 14, a Soviet-era bakery in a basement two blocks east of the avenue's northern end, marked only by the smell and a handwritten sign. There is one product: shotis puri, baked against the wall of a tone oven that has run since 1961. Arrive by 4:30, because they close when the bread runs out, and it runs out. One loaf, 1.5 lari, torn and eaten warm on the walk back, is the correct dessert for this entire afternoon. Buy a second loaf. You will finish the first before you reach the metro.