Armenia

Erebuni

This one’s taken a while to organise. I had a disappointing trip to a place called ‘Garni’ in Chiswick which had been turned in to an antiques shop. You could still see the faded outline of Armen behind the new sign which disappointed me even more. There’s nothing particularly wrong with Chiswick, but there’s nothing particularly right either, so me and the girlf turned right around and travelled back to South London for a curry.

The place I found, Erebuni is hidden away under a hotel in West London and isn’t specifically an Armenian restaurant, it has dishes from Russia, Georgia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan as well, but there six or seven dishes called ’Armenian’ on the menu. Enough to have a meal for two with Armenian dishes as starters and mains which’ll do the job.

Your directed to a darkly decorated cellar restaurant in the bowels of the building, in which a couple of bored staff and a pair of bemused residents sit around watching Russian television. A waitress showed us to a table and handed us the extensive menu.

To start we chose Emanbajady (fried vegetables in tomato sauce) and Karmir Babar (marinated red pepper). The Peppers had the tartness of vinegar mixed with the sweetness of the pepper and we’re delicious. The Emanbajady was warming and garlicky too. We had a glass of Georgian wine to wash it down with, though we were tremendously tempted by the ‘Soviet Shampagnskoye’, but not tempted enough to splash out 40 quid for a bottle.

Mains were the “extremely popular” Chicken Tapaka, and Armenian Dolma. We could have chosen a couple of kebabs, but I’m sure they’ll be plenty of opportunities to have them as I travel the world of restaurants. Neither dish was exactly amazing but they were both filling and somewhat homely. Whilst we ate the staff sat together and chatted so that we both felt a bit like we were putting them out to ask for anything.

After considering what we’d spent on the first two courses (more than £16 each), we decided to share an Armenian cake for dessert. It wasn’t anything special.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad meal, and I didn’t expect anything amazing, but for the price (£40 each) it really isn’t worth the trip. It’s neither so good, or so entertainingly awful to be recommended. I imagine that an Armenian restaurant could serve the same homely and tasty food for a lot less money, but as I found out in Chiswick it doesn’t look like you’d get enough business to make a living.