A new Georgian restaurant, Ghemo, is coming to the Upper West Side, according to a liquor license application filed with Manhattan Community Board Seven.
Owned by Guram Kharshiladze, Ghemo started as a Georgian catering business in 2024, serving the increasingly popular cuisine around New York. Reports of the upcoming restaurant’s signage at its location on 201 W 106th St. made the rounds in January. Now we have some substantial information about the restaurant.
Ghemo will be a cozy, 40-seat neighborhood restaurant and bakery, serving some Georgian highlights like khachapuri, a cheese-filled bread, and khinkali, a Georgian soup dumpling. One of the main focuses at Ghemo is the wine selection it’ll be serving. The restaurant is going way back for its wine, past that new-age (4,000 BC) Italian stuff , all the way to the earliest documented wine, which dates back to 8,000 BC in the South Caucasus, what is modern-day Georgia.
“The first wine was invented in Georgia,” Kharshiladze told the community board, pulling rank. “We’re gonna introduce Georgian wines to the neighborhood and Middle Eastern wines, as well.” Ghemo’s selection includes chacha, a Georgian brandy similar to Italian grappa (or I suppose grappa is similar to chacha).
Kharshiladze says the majority of the work at Ghemo is done. He is aiming to open the restaurant in April.
