ARMENIAN ARCHITECT’S SWEET DREAMS WHET CZECH APPETITES

Agence France Presse
Nov 26 2008

FRYDEK-MISTEK, Czech Republic (AFP) — An Armenian architect’s foray
into the confectioner’s trade is sweetening the Czech appetite for
popular honey cakes made according to old Slavic recipes.

Five years ago, Gevorg Avetisyan, whose family fled their small,
troubled country in search of a better life, asked his sister to make
his favourite Armenian honey cake, which he then marketed to pubs in
the eastern town of Frydek-Mistek.

Czechs have indulged in nibbling on their own traditional honey cake,
the Medovnik, and sipping Medovina, mead or honey wine, mentioned in
old Czech legends ever since local honey production started in the
fifth century.

But Avetisyan’s imported version, the Marlenka cake, created a buzz.

Today, his company Miko International employs 200 people in a former
canteen of an old people’s home and exports cakes to Austria,
Britain, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Romania, Slovakia,
Slovenia and Spain.

The company, which expects to sell cakes worth 150 million koruna
(5.9 million euros, 7.4 million dollars) in 2008, will soon move to
a modern plant with a cutting-edge Dutch-made production line.

"All Armenians make the honey cake, but everyone uses a different
method. We have our own, and no one can make the same one," a nostalgic
Avetisyan told AFP.

"This is the original Armenian cake served to our kings," he insisted.

When Avetisyan entered the honey-cake-hungry Czech market, it was
dominated by two Russians who started producing Medovnik in Prague
in 1996 amid no competition, since local housewives loyal to family
recipes showed little taste for business.

The Armenian recipe is simple: make flat squares of dough, bake them,
arrange in five layers with a filling in between, and garnish the
top with ground nuts and chocolate stripes.

All you need to concoct this plain, simple, very sweet and rather
dry brown cake is milk, honey, flour, fat, sugar, eggs and nuts.

Today, both the square Marlenka and the round, native Medovnik hold
pride of place in Czech cafes and sweets shops. Few venues are without
display stands advertising both honey cakes.

Avetisyan beams when speaking about his business, which quickly
outmatched that of his Russian rivals thanks to an EU trademark and
exports to several European countries.

"I’ve never regretted moving here," said the 49-year-old entrepreneur
with receding dark hair and elegant glasses.

More than 10,000 Armenians have found their way to Prague and other
Czech cities since the the fall of communism and the breakup of the
Soviet Union which gave rise to an independent Armenia.

Still, the Armenian community here is one of the smallest in Europe,
compared to 500,000 in France or 100,000 in neighbouring Poland.

Avetisyan, an architect and interior designer, left in 1994, a period
in Armenia he likens to a "Stone Age" with "everyone chasing after
bread and the electricity on for only an hour a day."

He had started losing clients "so I packed up."

Avetisyan and his family ended up in Frydek-Mistek, a town with 60,000
inhabitants, where he opened a casino and a bar. Then he invited his
sister Hasmik to come and stay with his family.

"She started to ask me for work. She didn’t want to be a burden. So
I said, ‘why don’t you try my favourite honey cake,’ just to silence
her."

Hasmik made the first cakes in an electric oven in her two-room flat,
and her brother offered them to local pubs. After a month, they asked
a neighbour to help out, and after another five they had 30 staff
working in the house.

Avetisyan has found a new home in the Czech Republic, but he has
kept Armenian citizenship. He proudly cites one of the first Armenian
success stories in Prague.

Georgius Deodatus Damascenus, a man of Armenian origin, offered coffee
from a kettle he carried on a tray on his head before he founded one
of Prague’s first cafes, U Zlateho hada for the Golden Snake, in 1704.

Today, the venue he established near Prague’s picturesque Charles
Bridge offers slices of honey cakes at 85 koruna (3.20 euros) a piece,
more than twice the usual price.

"We used to sell Marlenka, but I don’t like it much," Ivana Kralova,
the cafe’s co-owner, told AFP. She prefers Medovnik because "it
is Czech" and she wants to "promote Czech products in the centre
of Prague".

Avetysian, looking every bit the successful entrepreneur in striped
shirt and black jeans with a dark-blue limo parked outside, shrugged
off her comment.

"I’m not going to beg them," he said.