Yerord Mas brings a revolution to Los Angeles Armenian cuisine

Lift half of Arthur Grigoryan's basturma brisket sandwich for your first bite and gaze for a moment into the beast's mouth.

You'll need a firm grip to manipulate the stretched edges of the fluffy pita, thick enough to discern a maze of air pockets around the edges. Inside the gaping maw: blocks of tongue-red pastrami, slathered with chaimen (a spice marinade with fenugreek, also sprinkled with cumin, garlic and chiles) used to season air-dried Armenian basturma alongside jerky, cured for two weeks and then smoked for 12 hours. The result, beyond the meaty intensity, is several textures at once: flaky, taut and buttery.

Dripping with Gruyere Mornay sauce, this is phenomenal, a piece of excess and engineering that has gone viral on social media several times over the near-decade the chef has been refining his form through pop-ups and ghost kitchens.

If the sandwich is the lure that leads you to the small Glendale restaurant that Grigoryan finally opened with his wife Takouhi Petrosyan in January, it will have done its job.

But order even one more dish from the concise menu (a whipped sauce, a crunchy lemon-mint salad, a chromatic twist on vegetarian kyuftah) and you'll realize you're getting much more than cleverly revised deli fare.

Los Angeles has never seen an Armenian restaurant like Yerord Mas before.

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This is a second-generation son of the city expressing the cuisine of its people: clear and personal, shaped by family stories yet informed by academic-level research, a link between there and here, then and now, a puzzle piece in our food culture that fits perfectly into place. And located in a former donut shop, no less.

Los Angeles is home to the largest Armenian diaspora population outside of Armenia; Our Armenian-run restaurants embody the breadth of the community's culinary prowess and depth of experiences. Conversations about great kebabs in Southern California tend to start with the Martirosyan family and their Mini Kabob in Glendale. Institutions like Carousel, which serves some of the deepest versions of the Lebanese mezze repertoire, and Falafel Arax, with its eponymous signature, date back to specialties adopted by displaced families fleeing the Armenian genocide after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Tun Lahmajo in Burbank takes its name from Armenia's national flatbread, with a menu that also delves into homemade roasts and herb stews and a variety of fantastic khachapuris.

Amid this richness, Yerord Mas flows into the lineage of other small, brave projects that have helped define and redefine essential kitchens in Los Angeles. I remember shuttered but not forgotten examples like Wes Avila's Guerrilla Tacos and Charles Olalia's Filipino counter Ricebar, as well as current innovators like banchan genius Jihee Kim's Perilla LA and Cody Ma and Misha Sesar's stellar Persian cafe Azizam.

Margat samak fish curry prepared with barramundi along with dishes including pistachio hummus, vegetarian kyuftah and basturma brisket sandwich.

Take a look at Grigoryan's hummus to see what I mean.

His paternal grandmother grew up in Kayseri, Türkiye, once the epicenter of Armenian life. Following the 1915 genocide, his family moved to Egypt. Aligning the influences that seeped into his cooking, Grigoryan tweaks a pistachio hummus recipe he found reading “A Treasure of Benefits and Variety on the Table: A 14th-Century Egyptian Cookbook,” translated by historian Nawal Nasrallah. The chickpea walnut mixture initially came out grainy, so he pulverized the pistachios in a Vitamix to match the consistency of the tahini, which he also uses in the sauce along with the usual garlic-lemon juice and hints of cumin and the Syrian Lebanese spice blend baharat.

It is perceived as familiar for its earthy softness, and novel for its subtle spicy sweetness, and totally delicious. Grigoryan often stands on the side of the restaurant building, baking pita to order in a portable oven. Because of his relatives' experiences in the diaspora, as a child he ate more pita than the staple Armenian lavash. Straight from the heat, this is bread like a hot air balloon, and hits even more sensorially as a hummus vehicle rather than a sandwich container.

Each dish on the concise, seasonally evolving menu is like that: a pleasure in its own context, but also a branch of the family tree, which Grigoryan will be happy to detail for you if you ask.

The hearty sandwich might take you to the small restaurant that Arthur Grigoryn and his wife, Takouhi Petrosyan, opened in January in Glendale. Order at the counter from a seasonally evolving menu where every dish is a delight.

His brother's in-laws are Iraqi, so an Iraqi fish curry makes its way into the repertoire, bathing a barramundi fillet in a silky spicy and slightly sour tomato sauce with tamarind.

Its European-style presentation specifically alludes to its culinary experience. Grigoryan had grown up in Los Angeles before attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. After graduating, he stayed in the city for a couple of years, cooking at fine-dining institution Drouant before returning to Southern California and landing at Nancy Silverton's Mozza Kitchens.

During a visit to Austin, Texas, in 2017, he had an epiphany at a well-traveled pilgrimage site, Franklin Barbecue. The joy of Aaron Franklin's post-oak scented brisket led him to imagine what this wobbly meat would be like crossed with the basturma his Armenian family fed him his entire life.

The trip to Texas propelled him toward entrepreneurship. He initially called his pop-up “III Mas BBQ,” a name that refers to the Third District neighborhood in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. His father had grown up there. In an interview, Grigoryan mentioned that his father had worked at a cured meat processing plant in Yerevan similar to RC Provisions in Burbank, the company that, among many customers, supplies the legendary pastrami to Langer's Deli.

I should probably mention that in its current restaurant version, the basturma brisket sandwich costs $38. Grigoryan uses Australian wagyu from a company that emphasizes sustainable farming practices. I don't mind the often overly unctuous wagyu as a signifier of luxury, but the sublime qualities achieved here speak for themselves. The sandwich could easily be enough for two people, and a variation of cherrywood-smoked pork with toum, shatta, shishito peppers and sumac-flecked onions is about the same and costs $24.

Chef and owner Arthur Grigoryan with his pita. Spiced kyuftah options include lentils, beef tartare and bulgur. (Ronaldo Bolaños/Los Angeles Times)

Ironically, the sandwich's fame also downplays the restaurant's many vegetarian options. It makes two meatless versions of kyuftah, lentils or bulgur magnified with fresh herbs and dark spices and giving them oval shapes surrounded by fresh vegetables. In addition to a delicious and crunchy fattoush and hummus, or a muhammara with pomegranate molasses, animal protein is not missed.

Discover all this in a truly peculiar environment. The Yerord Mas building, which still looks a lot like the Faster Donuts it once housed, floats in the center of a quiet shopping center in a commercial area on the outskirts of Burbank. Jane Choi, whom longtime Angelenos might recognize from her days as manager at Canelé, a neighborhood gem that closed in Atwater Village a decade ago, does her best to infuse the five-table dining room with her bustling sense of grace.

Plus, we're in Los Angeles. We know how wonders manifest themselves in shopping malls. This is one of them.