Inside L.A.’s Armenian banquet halls, where the caviar flows and the party never stops
It’s 6 p.m. on a Saturday, and a convoy of luxury cars accompanied by four police motorcycles lines up in front of Landmark Venue in Mission Hills. It’s not an official diplomatic delegation but an Armenian wedding arriving to the party after a ceremony at St. Leon Cathedral in Burbank. The newlyweds, Nelly Nazarian and Sahak Ter-Sahakyan, slowly emerge from a white Rolls-Royce and enter the venue on a red carpet, accompanied by a live violin performance.
Inside, the tables are set with thousands of candles and a sea of white roses in tall vases reaching toward the 25-foot ceiling strung with pearls and wisteria. Plates of chi kyufta, lean raw meat kneaded with bulgur, aromatics and spices, sit alongside enough caviar to accommodate bumps the size of golf balls for 450 guests. And in the back, two cooks are making 2-foot-long khorovats: The hundreds of skewers of pork, beef, chicken and lamb appear occasionally through the smoke on the grills.
“I’ve always wanted a big wedding,” Nazarian says. “As Armenians, it’s important to keep the traditions alive. We also wanted to do some new things so our guests of all generations could enjoy it.”
Parties like theirs are part of Armenian American culture in Los Angeles, and their foundation is the Armenian banquet hall, built for a community that values outsize celebrations: hundreds of guests, extravagant decor, massive dance floors, famous singers and DJs, flowing wine and tables laden with food.
In the past 40 years banquet halls have evolved to embrace more of kaleidoscopic L.A. — including quinceañeras, bar mitzvahs, nonalcoholic “coffee raves” — extending a collective notion of hospitality, culinary ideas and the importance of gatherings.
“The most important change in the banquet halls is the easiest one to picture,” says Vrej Sarkissian, chief executive of Anoush Catering and L.A. Banquets. “You can see it on the table.” The food is increasingly lavish and varied, and some new traditions have replaced old ones. At the newlyweds’ reception, sushi boats and shrimp ceviche spoons supplant tabbouleh. At midnight, instead of the traditional pamidorov dzvadzegh, or tomato omelet, for guests who want to sober up after too many vodka shots, food trucks line up in front of the banquet hall serving pizza, burgers and ice cream.
The first Armenian banquet halls opened in Hollywood in the late 1980s and later spread to Glendale, Burbank, North Hollywood, Pasadena and other areas of Los Angeles, as did the Armenian American community.
Rooted in community and resilience, the banquet halls first established in Los Angeles became information hubs for immigrants navigating the challenges of their new home. Banquet halls were where a parcel could get dropped off to reach the airport or where Armenian newcomers could learn about resources for government assistance. While the majority of these venues are stand-alone businesses, some are affiliated with churches such as Raymond and Ani Kouyoumjian Hall at St. Gregory Armenian Catholic Church or Kalaydjian Banquet Hall and Cultural Center at St. Leon.
The banquet halls often offered many immigrants their first employment. Some had degrees in science and education in their home countries and were sensitive to a new reality. Sarkissian, whose family started one of the first banquet halls in Los Angeles, remembers that his father acted as a friend and counselor to a lot of immigrants who suffered extreme culture shock.
“That restart proved to be very difficult, and my father guided a lot of people,” said Sarkissian, “helping them establish businesses, start or connect with families, continue education and a plethora of resources.”
Sarkissian oversees Anoush, originally known as Anoush Banquet Hall. Founded by his father, Sebooh Sarkissian in 1986, it was formerly located on the corner of Sunset and Harvard in Hollywood. From the beginning, Sebooh, his wife and three sons were involved in every aspect of the business from moving the furniture to dishwashing to playing the latest hits during the events as DJs.
Over the next three decades, Anoush expanded to seven more locations in Glendale, North Hollywood and Mission Hills as a banquet hall and catering business. Now, Anoush Catering & L.A. Banquets has two venues, Gleonaks Anoush and Landmark.
“The food complements the way we like to celebrate,” says Sarkissian. “The music is going, people are dancing, and the food is always on the table! You’re doing a toast in 30 minutes with your uncle, you’re dancing with somebody else later, and the good food is still there!”
Food has always been at the center of Armenian celebrations: As a minority community surviving far away from the homeland, it’s a way to show solicitude in times of grief and the ultimate expression of sharing and partying.
Tables filled with food, cheerful toasts and a genuine love for partying became popular with non-Armenian clientele too. The draw was not only a variety of food choices but also the unique atmosphere: Guests dance all night long to live performances, occasionally taking breaks for freshly served khorovats; children sleep on the chairs completely unbothered by the music and sing-alongs; grandmas and elderly uncles discuss the latest developments in their families over cups of black coffee.
For a wedding with 250 guests at Vertigo Event Venue in Glendale, at least four kitchen team members work 70 to 80 hours to prepare and execute the event.
The food is typically served family-style: up to 20 cold and hot appetizers of dips, salads, puff-pastry boreks, cheeses and cured meats. Following are two to three entrees such as grilled fish with potatoes, chicken with pilaf and, of course, khorovats, the traditional Armenian charred meat. In the late 1970s chefs from prominent restaurants in Armenia traveled to international culinary exhibitions in France, Greece and some Arab countries and adopted innovative techniques. Prior to this, their menus already had been enriched with the spices and flavors that many brought from Europe, the Middle East and the U.S. during the Soviet-organized repatriation of the 1940s.
“It created a hug-bug buffet of sorts of these beloved items that we put all together,” says Michael Keshishian, the co-owner of Vertigo. “And when we came to the United States, we brought that buffet with us. Somehow, Greek, Russian, Armenian, semi-Lebanese mixes of these items landed on our table including the Greek cheeses, olives, Russian eggplant and beet salads and some Persian dishes. We made the highlights of our top 20 favorite appetizers and kept our khorovats. That became the Armenian banquet experience.”
The growing Armenian population’s demand for modern trends in food and design, along with interest from other Angeleno communities, created opportunities for nontraditional concepts such as cocktail receptions, more-intimate parties, garden celebrations with various kinds of live entertainment, fashion shows, concerts and seminars.
“Throughout the years, this concept proved to work for our community,” says Sarkissian. “These events bring everyone together. We do it really well, and we also set the trend for the other communities.”
That became the foundation for Keshishian to launch Vertigo in 2014 with four other investors.
A chef and event producer, Keshishian said he wanted to revolutionize the entire menu, something that hadn’t been done yet. Even though the chefs at banquet halls had added some new dishes to the core family-style menu, such as Chinese chicken salad or mushroom quiche, they stayed true to the traditional combination of charred meat, chicken kebabs, carrot and olivier salads (cooked vegetables with mayonnaise and sour cream) and rice pilaf or bulgur.
“I thought that it was stuck in an era that needed to be unstuck. I took all of the classics, the entire menu of almost all the existing banquet halls and created my version of a fusion Armenian banquet hall menu,” says Keshishian.
In Vertigo’s kitchen its famous beet salad — made with mayonnaise, walnuts, pomegranate and garlic — became a salad of cubed roasted beets with goat cheese and strawberries, garnished with mint, balsamic reduction, figs and candied walnuts with rosemary and cinnamon.
When Robert Shahnazarian, his wife, Maggie, and his brother-in-law Sarkis Khatchikian founded Noor Events in the vibrant Paseo Shopping Mall in Pasadena in 2010, they made sure to include fusion dishes like bao buns and char siu to cater to the local Asian population. He also added some of his father’s favorite Persian dishes, including ghormeh sabzi and khoresh gheymeh.
Shahnazarian worked at Sony Music as a producer with Taylor Swift, Kelly Clarkson, John Legend and others. When he and Maggie married 30 years ago, they couldn’t find a venue that would meet all their expectations and ended up having their celebration at a ranch in Malibu. Everything from the furniture, portable kitchen, valet service and food was catered. Noor Events became Robert’s executive business plan at Pepperdine University, where he was working on an MBA degree.
“We decided to build a place with everything missing elsewhere in mind,” says Shahnazarian. “The banquet halls are great when they know our culture and food. But sometimes the location is not great, they don’t have a view, the decor is kind of gold with lions. … People with a budget end up going to the country clubs and hotels. But then the food is not there!
“Weddings in particular are cultural events. And Armenians, whatever event they are celebrating, have Armenian food.”
