This week we are offering a special edition of the Khachapuri Index. For this edition, we asked our relatives and friends who live abroad to tell us the price of khachapuri ingredients they are buying. Unfortunately, they cannot buy Imeretian cheese in their counties of residence, so they usually use mozzarella or feta cheese to make khachapuri. Of course, even mozzarella cheese brands and prices vary from country to country. However, we looked at data on whatever cheese our informants think is most similar to khachapuri cheese; we wanted to check how much it costs for the diaspora to cook khachapuri in different countries.

We used our Khachapuri Index recipe for calculating the cost of making khachapuri abroad. The highest price for khachapuri is found in Singapore, where the price stands at 12.28 GEL. The U.S. took second place with 10.71 GEL. Switzerland, Italy, and Greece followed closely with 8.13 GEL, 7.29 GEL, and 7.25 GEL, respectively. The cheapest country by our index is India, where the price of cooking one standard khachapuri stands at 2.91 GEL, which is 26% cheaper than in Georgia. Obviously, there is a big difference in khachapuri prices for Georgians residing in different countries. At the same time, there are definitely some differences in the prices of khachapuri ingredients within presented countries, and one can cook a cheaper or more expensive version of this Georgian dish, depending on how frugal the person is.