Aragvi

Aragvi was a restaurant on Tverskaya Street in Moscow, specializing in Georgian and Caucasian cuisine. In Soviet times it became a meeting place for political, scientific and cultural elites, and its building is now recognised as a Russian cultural heritage site.

History

The site first held aristocratic residences in the reign of Alexis of Russia. Reconstructed in the 1730s by Knyaz V. I. Gagarin, the buildings gained three more storeys in the nineteenth century and became a hotel. The structure was fully rebuilt in the 1930s and renamed the Hotel Dresden in 1937.

During those renovations, at the initiative of Lavrentiy Beria, a Georgian restaurant called Aragvi opened, led by Longinoz Stazhadze, a member of Samtrust, a winemaking trust founded in 1929 in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic. It soon gained a reputation for quality and drew the Soviet elite. High prices and strict entry control made it largely out of reach for ordinary citizens. After the Soviet collapse it became increasingly linked to organised crime.

Closed for renovation in the early 2000s, it reopened in 2016 under Armenian businessmen Samvel Karpetyan and Gor Nakhapetyan, after a renovation costing around 20 million dollars. The menu expanded to include non-Georgian Caucasian dishes. It closed permanently on 11 February 2019.

Culture

For decades Aragvi was a landmark of Georgian cooking in the Russian capital, known for its wine, grilled meats and Caucasian dishes, and one of the few upscale tables that Soviet society associated with prestige. Its fame extended into popular culture, both Soviet and American, so many remember it as a symbol as much as a restaurant. Today its name remains tied to Moscow's culinary memory and to the capital's twentieth-century history.