Trick Dog founder Josh Harris bridges lifelong home with ancestral one
By Ali Wunderman
San Francisco Examiner
When Josh Harris of Trick Dog fame touched down in Yerevan, Armenia this month, it wasn’t just a homecoming — it was history in the making.
For the first time ever, Armenia was shaking (and stirring) up its spirits scene with the inaugural Yerevan Cocktail Week. Harris was there, not only repping The City by sharing his wealth of knowledge on creating paradigm-shifting nightlife, but exploring his ancestral homeland as a member of the Armenian diaspora that now calls San Francisco home.
Born and raised in San Francisco to Armenian parents, Harris says he grew up mostly disconnected from his ethnic heritage.
“My ‘Armenian-ness’ lived in the story of my grandfather’s escape from Armenia,” he tells The Examiner. “That, plus pilaf and lamb chops, would be the extent of it.”
Harris didn’t attend Armenian churches in San Francisco. He was baptized Episcopalian, attended St. Ignatius College Preparatory School, and doesn’t sport a surname indicative of his roots. Many Armenians have last names ending in -ian or -yan.
He says this is the result of name-change assimilation that happened to many immigrant families at Ellis Island.
“Der Arsenian became Harrison” when his grandfather arrived at Ellis Island, Harris says. “And my grandpa didn’t like Harrison, so it was shortened to Harris.”
So I was surprised to hear from Josh when I was visiting Armenia in 2023. We knew each other from working on bar-related stories in San Francisco, and after seeing my social media posts about exploring the booming wine industry in and around the capital city of Yerevan, he reached out to share his connection to the country I was in — the place from which his ancestors had come, but one where he had never been.
My trip was a continuation of an education about San Francisco’s small but mighty Armenian community, who have had a considerable impact on The City’s culture since the diaspora came here following the Armenian Genocide beginning in 1915. I wanted to understand why the community had escaped my awareness.
For example, growing up, I didn’t know that the landmark Mt. Davidson Cross was erected as a memorial to the 1.5 million Armenians killed in that tragedy. And even Rice-A-Roni, the famous “San Francisco Treat,” is based on a pilaf recipe developed by Armenian Genocide survivor Pailadzo Captanian.
“Armenians in the Bay Area are hidden gems compared to other parts of California where our presence more obviously shines, but our impact here is most certainly felt,” shares Ella Sogomonian, CEO of the local communications firm Ella Vision LLC. “The beauty of being an Armenian anywhere is that we carry the spirit of resilience and a hunger to achieve. Everywhere we go we start businesses that make a mark, just like we’re seeing now with Josh and his popular bar in San Francisco.”
It was Julio Bermejo of Tommy’s Mexican Restaurant who turned Harris on to the niche cocktail event in Armenia. The jetsetting bartender was already planning to attend Yerevan Cocktail Week, and connected Harris with the event’s organizer, Gegam Kazarian, to officially invite him. Harris didn’t hesitate to accept.
“I obviously like what I do for a living, but admittedly it was a mechanism for me to go explore my heritage in a deeper way,” he recalls.
During the event, the San Francisco duo did a guest shift behind the bar representing The City, and Harris presented on the creative process behind building a world-renowned cocktail menu.
Harris, who had been courting a growing curiosity about his roots in the years leading up to Yerevan Cocktail Week, calls the experience life-altering.
“I was firing on all cylinders energetically, my mind was racing, my heart was racing,” says Harris of touching down in Yerevan.
Harris says he anticipated that it would be a powerful experience to connect with his heritage in ways that hadn’t been accessible to him before, and he left with a profound epiphany.
“These are the people that have the same blood as me,” he says. “I was thinking a lot about how everybody that I meet that is Armenian is the relative of somebody that survived. And that’s a really heavy thing.”
After a whirlwind week in Armenia connecting with his culture, Harris has returned home to San Francisco with the intention to strengthen his engagement with the Armenian community in The City.
“I’ve heard about the Armenian Food Festival for years, and I want to go to that,” he says. Not just to eat the food, but to be around more Armenian people so he can continue deepening the relationship with his heritage.
Harris’s trip is already having an impact on San Francisco’s Armenian community. Sogomonian says she’s “proud to see him representing the diversity and open-mindedness of the Bay while exploring old world tastes and traditions in our homeland.”
He brought a taste of his ancestral home back to The City, too. San Franciscans can expect to experience standout flavors of the Caucasus via Trick Dog’s menu.
Harris says he was particularly inspired by Armenian walnuts as a potential garnish. The unripened nuts are picked green and steeped in syrup, and could be used in place of a maraschino cherry.
“I didn’t know that Armenians claim and celebrate the pomegranate to the degree that they do, so that’s obviously got to be in the mix,” he says, with Armenian-distilled gins coming to the cocktail bar’s menu soon, too.
