Georgian restaurant finds success within fried chicken joint
The owners of Twist & Taste have moved their business from a sandwich counter outside of Edmonton's city limits into the heart of Old Strathcona, citing high demand for their Eastern European food.
"When we started growing, it was obvious that we outgrew our portion of the kitchen," said Mikheil Gabiela, who owns the Georgian restaurant with his wife Mariia Kuoropata. "We tried to expand and opened another area for our kitchen, but it was constant running from one area to another."
In March 2025, a little more than a year after settling in Canada, Gabiela and Kuoropata opened Twist & Taste within Big Bear Sandwich Co in Sherwood Park. In December, the couple moved the business inside Waffle Bird at 10347 80 Avenue NW.
Two weeks after opening, Gabiela posted that Twist & Taste had broken all previous sales records for a given week, with nearly 1,300 dumplings sold in five days. "We grow every week — literally," he said. "New people are coming, ordering more and more. We have new regulars just within the first three weeks (at Waffle Bird)."
Gabiela credits Waffle Bird with lending a wing to Twist & Taste's success. The space is a better match for the experience he wants to offer, it has a liquor licence, and the Waffle Bird team has been generous with its expertise, he said. Big Bear was an incubator for Twist & Taste, while Waffle Bird is an "incubator on steroids," he told Taproot.
"They have experience and education in industrial restaurant cooking," Gabiela said. "They help us a lot to put our business on a bigger, faster track with their advice … That's part of my strategy because I'm not as experienced in professional kitchens and foreign-country business rules."
As for Waffle Bird, owner Jonathan Comeau told Taproot he decided to work with Gabiela because he was intrigued by the food and felt it would not compete with his own southern-fried fare.
Twist & Taste is Gabiela's first restaurant. In fact, he had hardly cooked for himself until he moved from his native Georgia to China to teach English as a second language. He taught himself to cook the food he grew up with because he missed it. China is also where he met Kuoropata, a Ukrainian, who encouraged him to share his food with the world.
"We did an event in China, and it was an absolute success," Gabiela said. "We made 300 dumplings."
The Georgian-style dumplings Gabiela makes, called khinkali, are one of the signature menu items at Twist & Taste. Khinkali can come with a variety of fillings, often meat and soup, but they all feature a twisted-off knob at the top. Another staple at Twist & Taste is khachapuri, a boat-shaped bread dish loaded with cheese.
