awash in lavash
Pretending to like foie gras has taken its toll and you’re actually hungry at this point. Tsvetnoi Bulvar’s Lavash says grab a piece of flatbread and get to work. The talking chicken outside isn’t theirs, but the delicious Armenian food is.
TEXT GEORGY IVANOV/TEXT SONYA RINKUS feedback
Maybe you’ve heard the motion-activated chicken on Tsvetnoi Bulvar begging to be eaten. As we looked for the door to Lavash, and kept setting off the masochistic “Mmmm, vkoosno,” my translator, stomach turning, threatened to leave. Thankfully, the foul fowl does not belong to Lavash but the next-door rotisserie. This is something for which the Armenian restaurant should be publicly cleared for blame, as it’s not entirely evident that it does not belong to them from the outside. The clean, Eastern palace at the top of the stairs is casual dining, but not that casual. Not greasy spoon, not Novikov — what is Lavash? The owner outlined a pragmatic philosophy of business for Lavash, refreshing in this era of Turandots and Aists: it’s all about the food. And not in the way that Bouillabaise is “all about the food.” Forget flying out the best chefs from France — “If you are a good French chef, are you really going to come to Moscow?” he asked — or fostering an atmosphere in which watching other patrons pick at foie gras is more important that eating itself. Lavash is for the hungry, bez bazzara, and it pleasures them to fill your tummy. “Our prices are cheap so that you can eat a lot,” the restaurateur said simply. Perhaps that’s why they are named for the most functional of foods, the flatbread that’s ultimately more of a utensil than a side dish. Armenian food looks pretty simple, and the key to perfect Armenian cuisine must be authenticity. For that, management flew in from the homeland the cooks, designers, decorations and food to do it right. The owner picked out the most famous national dishes to sample — for those you don’t have the pleasure of dining with an attentive Caucasian restaurateur, “Signature Dishes” are indicated with a swoosh on the menu — starting with a massive clay mug of tan (30 rubles), kefir by way of Armenia, and spas (180 rubles), a sour-milk soup of wheat grits, browned onions and cilantro. Smooth and lacteous, these dishes hit the comfort food quandrant of the stomach, although the eyes saw another hour on the Radisson elliptical. “Calcium,” my translator offered optimistically. To even out the lactose party, we were served nairy (200 rubles), an oil-accented salad of tomatoes and cucumbers, themselves recent — and brief — Armenian immigrants. More all-stars of the ancient world were summarily paraded out for our inspection: dolma (220 rubles), minced veal wrapped in grape leaves and served with traditional matsoon sauce, and plov (240 rubles) with mushrooms picked on a lush mountain of Armenia. Again, Lavash has the winning strategy, because, honestly, who doesn’t like plov? Even the greasy kiosk variety is a happy lunch, so plov composed of ingredients from the ecologically pure highlands was exceedingly well-received. Then came the kyufta (390 rubles), the most famous of all, according to the menu, and certainly one of the apples of the owner’s eye, although my companion could only move it around on the plate politely. Fortunately, the minced meat served on a plate of lavash which had the consistency of Spam and glistened with fat didn’t bother me a bit, and I ate the whole thing as the conversation meandered from the intricacies of Armenian dining to those of American culture, such as the meaning of “Let’s go” (“Davai”) or whether Jews controlled the government (“Um.”). A tender, grilled Karmrahait trout (430 rubles) plucked from a faraway river was the last Armenian ambassador to our stomachs. “Contraband,” we were informed, but the only crime I saw was committed was that of a fish being too delicious. After a few glasses of pomengranate-accented Lernashen wine (900 rubles per .75 L), I had doffed the translator all together, speaking fluent Russian and maybe even Armenian at this point. On the way out, having picked up that my translator was part of the Tribe, the owner introduced her to the nice Jewish coatcheck man so they could plot world domination together. There you have the ultimate Armenian dining experience: low-key, cheap and unafraid to put it all out there on the table. |
