Restaurant - Jakobs
Location - Gloucester Road
By Boeing : 8330 miles
By Boris Bike : 5.7 miles
Begrudgingly leaving the delights of Argentina behind I approached my next destination with a sense of intrigue bordering on trepidation. Before you set foot in a country, or in my case one of its food preparing exclaves, your mind builds a picture based on media projection and poorly sourced prejudice. I had already conjured up an image of Armenia of hirsute, hillside goat shepherdesses cowering from soviet skirmishes in the valleys below. Clearly I was safe from such internecine warfare in Gloucester Road but nevertheless to enter a restaurant uneasy rather than expectant does not make for the greatest start to an evening.
On being led to my table I was fortified by the thought that twenty years ago people may have had the same reservations about war torn Croatia, now one of the most popular holiday destinations in Europe. ‘Undiscovered’ can be a surprisingly powerful selling point even if it leads the more astute to question why it has never been discovered before. It is all very well a country offering ‘authenticity’ but if this comes hand in hand with ‘abject poverty’ and ‘occasional guerrilla uprisings’ it tends to take the sheen off the romance.
The restaurant was a hotchpotch of cultural paraphernalia, including some rather sinister looking dolls and grotesque anthromorphic figurines, and eclectic groups of diners. I got the impression that my fellow diners had chanced upon it through convenience or hunger and had carried out little or no research into its Armenian roots. During the day the owners, presumably in an attempt to increase patronage, transformed the restaurant into the ‘messy hands’ children’s pottery club. Whether the children were encouraged to mould Armenian fauna and flagons I cannot say.
Although a new country I immediately sensed I was in familiar territory. Like Afghanistan and Albania this is a land squeezed between east and west in the borderlands of Europe and Asia. Armenia, in the cranny of the Caucasus, is part of that huge swathe of Eurasia that on liberation from soviet yolk fragmented into an intricate jigsaw of national self-determination and fledgling democracies. In this hard-edged hinterland almost every village attests its unique ethno-cultural heritage and its right to be recognised as an independent nation. In ten years time it is plausible that this journey could encompass a further fifty or so countries in this region, some as small as Monaco and as non-descript as Wales.
Bordered by Turkey and Iran, Armenian cuisine has a decidedly middle eastern flavour. This was clearly evident from the buffet at Jacobs, the diner-cum-delicatessen, that offered local staples such as Aubergine, chick peas and cracked wheat salads. But as in Albania the national dishes were conspicuous by their absence. Fasulya, a stew of lamb, green beans and strained tomato was not available. Neither was checil, a pickled cheese, or a sour plum puree intriguingly translated as ‘fruit leather’. The generic regional fare was hearty and wholesome but didn’t offer a distinctly Armenian flavour. My stuffed aubergine was suitably satisying but I was left wondering whether it would have been enriched by a sip of the local Armenian brew of fermented bread. Similarly I was disappointed not to sample the speciality soup of lentils and walnuts. Though suitably nourished I felt that in distilling the national flavour they had distilled the dining experience. The commercial compromise of the owners had forced a culinary compromise on the customer.
We ordered three beers with our starters only to later discover that this modest order represented 75% of their available stock. I don’t know whether this was due to Armenian abstemiousness or whether the opposite was in fact true and that the lunch time frequenters had got more than a little merry. In any case it was the first time I have ever been at a restaurant that was unable to fulfil a drinks order.
My fellow diner wryly noted that his rice was ‘red’, and quipped that this was in homage to their soviet heritage. But looking around there was no bust of Lenin on the wall or hammer and sickle hung in the restrooms. Indeed the atmosphere and adornments reflected a small, eccentric land of folk-lore, not a colossal and uniform collective. But, alas, there was little to give identity to that land or resonance to that folk-lore. It was intriguing clutter that drew the eye but did not enlighten or enrich the beholder.
What tourist would chose to visit such a place? Unsurprisingly tourism is not playing as large a role as Armenians would hope in revitalising their economy. Left a legacy of crumbling soviet era industrial infrastructure the nation has returned to a more pastoral lifestyle and diversified into new markets such as finishing precious stones. This is a new country with an age old aspiration, to promote its attractions and attributes to the wider world. Rumour has it Armenia is preparing a case for membership of the European Union. But it will take a period of lasting peace and prosperity, not to mention a genius in public relations, for a common or garden Englishman to tell his kids that they are not going to Euro Disney this summer afterall, but the Armenian steppe.
