"During Soviet times, Georgia was the Riviera of the Black Sea," says Kargi Gogo co-owner Sean Fredericks. "Beaches. High mountains for skiing. A huge wine-making region. Great food."

Eight years ago, Fredericks and partner McKinze Cook traveled to the Eastern European country with the Peace Corps, quickly falling in love with the food, wine and people. In 2013, they opened Kargi Gogo, a downtown Portland food cart known for its Georgian cheesy bread and plump, knobby dumplings.

Next week, three years after it closed, Kargi Gogo will open a brick-and-mortar restaurant in the former home of The Big Egg, a plan hatched, like all the best ones, while drinking with Georgian winemakers at Les Caves.

Fredericks describes three pillars for the new menu, which expands on the options at the cart:

Khachapuri, or Georgian cheese breads, with several varieties on offer including the famous boat-shaped, egg-topped acharuli khachapuri, plus a few other breads without cheese.

Khinkali, the fat, nobbed Georgian dumplings here filled with beef and pork, mushroom and herb and a third, seasonal option -- think a half-sized potato and cheese khinkali with fresh leeks, thyme, caramelized onions and butter in the summer; squash come fall.

Seasonal sides and dips including simple tomato-cucumber salads, soft cheeses with mint and Georgia's famous pkhali, with vegetables and walnuts ground together with spices.

"My goal of this is that 90 percent of the food is authentic, strictly what it would taste like in Georgia," Fredericks said. The other 10 percent will "use Georgian techniques and spices but also incorporate local and seasonal ingredients to expand the boundaries of Georgian food."

Kargi Gogo's old downtown Portland cart, which closed in 2015.

Inspired by that trip to Les Caves, Fredericks thinks Kargi Gogo might be the only restaurant on the West Coast to exclusively feature wines from Georgia, the birthplace of wine. Georgia, Fredericks notes, has been making wine in clay vessels buried up to their mouths underground more or less continuously for 8,000 years. Expect affordable glass pours of both wines turned orange from extended skin contact and more familiar varietals that "create a bridge" for customers.

"If you spend any amount of time in Georgia, certain things are going to happen," Fredericks said. "You're going to try khachapuri or khinkali, and you're going to try Georgian wine. When I was there, it was almost two years before I had wine out of a bottle with a cork in it. Most of it came out of plastic jugs from people's cellars, because most people make their own wine."

Over the past half decade, Portland has become an unlikely leader for food from the former Soviet Union, with Vitaly Paley's Da Net pop-up and Russian tea experience at the Heathman Hotel as well as Southeast Portland's celebrated Kachka, which will open in its new location with several Georgian-inspired dishes later this month.

"People go to Moscow or St. Petersburg and come back and say the best place they ate was a Georgian restaurant," said Fredericks. "It has an identity as the part of the world where there's good food, good wine and just a good place to be in general."

Now Fredericks and Cook will bring that experience back to Portland.

Look for Kargi Gogo to open Wednesday, July 18. Opening hours will run from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday.

-- Michael Russell