Vernatoun highlights Armenian dishes often cooked at home for families and guests
Depending on one’s preference, the Glendale strip mall on the corner of Central and Chevy Chase Avenues is mostly known for a branch of Papillon International Bakery or an outlet of Baskin-Robbins, the ice cream chain founded in this city back in 1945. In spring of 2021, Vernatoun restaurant and banquet hall opened in the back corner of the strip mall, serving some of the most compelling Armenian food in Glendale. With faux brick walls, burgundy-clothed tables, and a layout that accommodates banquets (a fairly common business model in the city), the menu leans on classic Armenian dishes executed for their target demographic: the largest Armenian community in the United States.
Armenian cuisine exists as part of a diaspora, since the country’s people spread across the Caucasus, Mediterranean, Middle East, and elsewhere to escape atrocities that Turkey perpetrated upon the Armenian people beginning in 1915. Restaurateurs who have reached Los Angeles to start businesses often incorporate influences from intervening generations spent in countries like Russia, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Greece.
Vernatoun’s kitchen manager Valog Vartanyan grew up in Tehran; his grandfathers escaped persecution in Armenia and moved to Iran before he was born. Vartanyan has lived in LA for 12 years. He previously cooked at another Armenian restaurant in Glendale that closed due to the pandemic before joining Vernatoun, whose owner and general manager hail from Yerevan, Armenia’s capital.