 I just went to a physical therapist the other day, Cairo, cracked my back, Armenia. Mm-hmm. Has strong hands. Little Armenia is another one of LA's beautiful ethnic enclaves. And since Armenian people have such a complex history, their diaspora lends itself to a wide range of dishes that are a little Middle Eastern, a little Russian, Polish, and Lebanese, just to name a few. And although most Armenians now reside in Glendale, California, Little Armenia remains as the urban center of food and culture. Let's see what this excursion brings us. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to a brand new series called Take Out Only. Woo! You got Brian Benson with us. What's up, guys? You guys, we're in Little Armenia. I've heard of Little Armenia for years. We've lived in LA, but we've never been here. And it is Take Out Only. We got to practice some social distancing right now. But it's all good because we want to try some new food and still get that experience. LA actually has the second largest population of Armenians outside of Armenia. The Kardashians are half Armenian. M. Kardashian had her 37th birthday at one of the restaurants. All right, you guys, we are at our first of three spots on our Little Armenia crawl, Teran Bakery. And remember, guys, Take Out Only. Okay. Are you handing me a bag of lemons? The lemons are supposed to go on the Lemajoun. The Lemajoun is known as the Armenian pizza. Yes. No cheese, though, right? No cheese. You can put cheese on top, like a nice feta. You still have to support local businesses. For hell, yeah. Still order delivery, still get Take Out. The homie right here is folding it up. Yeah. New York Slice. All right. But it was recommended to squeeze a little bit of lemon on top. Lemon it up. Lemon. Lemajoun Armenian pizza. Only $1.50, right? Only $1.50. This kind of tastes a little bit like that Chengdu street food called Kuwait. Yeah. That's like a Chinese pizza pocket. That's traditional Armenian yogurt drink. I got David, a sparkling cider. This is from Georgia. Not the state. Country, Georgia. Country, Georgia. It is recommended to shake this. Mm. Okay. Wow. Okay. That's a really nice yogurt flavor. That is not sweet, though. I thought it was gonna be sweet. It's a little bit sweet. This was easily the most pear tasting pear soda I've ever had. Moving on to Armenian pastry number two. Spicy cheese boring. Wow. It's a flat bread that's folded on top of each other. Right. These Armenian breakfast pastries, they're actually really light. Spicy cheese boric, $4.50. Nice and thin. That cheese is nice and spicy. All right, you guys. Now we are moving into the lightning round here at the Armenian Tehran bakery. All right. So we have a niche right here. We have a potato boric and then a cheese boric right here. A spinach and cheese. Spinach and cheese boric. Not borat. I'm talking about boric. Potato and spices inside. Nicely spiced potato, nice and orange. Got a spinach boric. $1.50. Recession proof right here, man. I taste three things. It goes lemon zest, onion, then spinach. Kind of tastes like a lot of very seedy. If you're there, you need flavor. It's biblical. That's all olden times. I'm a big potato guy. All right, my favorite. Actually, what's the niche? Cheese boric here. This is tahini bread. This is a spinach and cheese kajapuri. And then this is a cheese kajapuri. This one doesn't have as much spice. This is without a nice tea. The cheese boric is really good. Kind of tastes like a Chinese almond cookie. You're definitely seeing influences from different places. Spinach and cheese. Oh, I'm done. The spinach and cheese kajapuri, I got to give it to it. That was the one. That was the one. This was the standout, but actually everything was good. You know, if we weren't supposed to be social distancing right now, I would maybe not recommend eating these fully in your car. Yeah, a lot of crumbs. Oh, wow. Look at the layers in this cookie. All right, I got to go shake myself off and then let's go to the next spot. We are headed out to spot number two in Little Armenia. So we're going to Papillon Bakery. They're known for their collection of sweet pastries, as well as perochis. Yalla bra. Is this it? We're right here though. Let me just look on this map. This is it. The reason why it took me so long to get everything is they make everything here to order. So I got us a selection of punch eggs, which are Armenian donuts. I heard the roots are from Poland, but they're filled with all different types of things because this spot is kind of like a modern spot. So this is a very famous Armenian fusion bakery called Papillon, but they do have some traditional items. All right, let's start here. Specifically the Lama June. They look pretty similar. Very similar. Comparing Lama June guys, we're becoming experts slowly. It's close for me because this one has more flavor in general, but the quality at Tehran, I think beats it a little bit. All right, so the Jingalov bread, this has spinach in it and then seven different herbs. Jingalov, 350. This bread is so soft. Sleeper. Considering it's straight veggies, I didn't expect to like it that much. It's delicious. Last that we have to compare is the Cheese Borek. This looks a little bit more like your conventional croissant. Cheese Borek, version two. Overall, I'll take the other one, but this cheese definitely has a sharper bite. I'll give it to Tehran. So far. So this is a meat and potato Parashki. I want to say, first of all, I always liked the Russian Polish version, but this had even more herbs in it. Dude, this tasted like a beef stew inside of a donut. It's a five out of five. That's it guys. The Parashki Armenian Empanada. Wow. The filling is much more Middle Eastern than the Parashki and the Armenian Empanada. Everything was like a meal inside of the donut. That was lit. The Ponchiks right here. This is going to get messy, guys. I know it. So we got a variety. Each filling is different of these donuts. We don't know which one. How do we identify that? You just got to bite in. Ponchiks Armenian Donuts. See what's inside. That was not a Corona cough, by the way, guys. I got custard. I think I got Oreo and Nutella. I got caramel ones. Oh, that is sweet and delicious, though. How can you guys describe it? How thin it is. And it actually doesn't feel that oily, surprising. No. Wow. Is that it? That's it? Hold on, man. I didn't want to share food too much, but I got to take the bite out of the other end. Finger burns. Yo, I don't know how they were able to have the top be so thin. Those were so good. But even concerning how much donut to filling ratio there was, there was like too much filling. How often do you say too much filling? I don't think I've ever said that before, actually. We are headed to Karasol. This is Kim Kardashian's favorite Armenian restaurant, or at least one that she had a birthday party at. In LA, that means a lot. Yo, I've been here before. Yo, we've been here before. All right, guys. I got the spread for us. David, this is something you've been looking forward to. Yes. First off, we had to go with the Mongolian dish. All right, you got to explain yourself. Mongolia, one time, Genghis Khan, Temujin. They pushed all the way that far into Eastern Europe. Wow. So I believe that Eastern Europe ended up adopting the Mongolian manti. I don't know what kind of sauce that is, but... Mm. The open topness makes it so that some of the meat got kind of charred and fried. We have muhammara here, which is a red pepper paste spread with crushed walnuts and then pomegranate molasses. Pomegranate walnut muhammara. Pomegranate? Very, very prevalent. I love that a lot, David. It has that kind of, like, deep chili flavor, but that brightness that comes through from the fruit. We got the main event right here. We have chicken kabob. This is a kofta, which is, like, a minced meat, and then you have your straight beef kabob over here. The pita's got, like, tomato spice in it. I'll take the kofta. I'll go with the beef then. Yo! I think we have to give the award to MessiestEater today to David. He's wearing most of what we ate today. You know, oftentimes when you see people eat stuff in the car, it's, like, fast food, but we're eating, like, gourmet, Mediterranean, Armenian, Lebanese food. Let's go. Kabobs. I do not anticipate the beef to be that tender. I've actually never really eaten kabobs like this before. The kofta kind of tastes like the gourmet, Mediterranean, like, hamburger patty. All right, you guys. We had to get some air to finish up dessert, but believe me, there is nobody within even 10 feet of us right now social distancing. Here for dessert. We have osmanli, a fried pastry, with a little bit of syrup on top. Osmanli. That is so good. That's one of the best desserts I've ever had. That was kind of, like, crispy chow mein with, like, cream on top. Oh, snap! That was the dessert chow mein. All right, we have one more dessert here. It's called halaue bejeben. It's a cheese dessert that has pistachio on top and another part kind of custard. Halaue bejeben. It's like a juicy flower rose custard. Dude, John might not have to try this. Man is shocked after eating Lebedee's dessert. All right, you guys. That does it for the Takeout Show, the little Armenia enclave episode. Order delivery. Support your local businesses. Top two things I've stood out to you. All right, I've got to say, for me, the thing that really stood out was the mesne. It just really took me back to, like, a different era, maybe, of civilization. Beef peraski that we had at Papillon. Like, you had the mix of the Polish with the Armenian. The thing that wowed me was the manti because I had actually been to, like, Greek restaurants before. You never had... I'd never been offered the manti. The manti. What was your favorite sweet thing we had, though? I think the last two desserts we had with the rose water syrup, to me, it was like neck and neck at 5.0, 5.0. I have to go with the kanafe just because it had a nice balance of the sweetness. I think that was the first dessert in a long time that kind of, like, blew me away, to be honest. Even though every shop was on the same street, it felt like a whole new experience. What I realized today was that, one, I had never really had Armenian food before. Two, it's delicious, affordable, with flavors I had never had. And three, maybe some of this food isn't meant to be eaten in the car. It goes to show you that, again, LA is such an interesting place. You can take many road trips to unique places just within the city. You can easily drive past these streets for years without pulling over and diving into a culture. So sometimes it's just nice to stop and smell the boric. Stay safe. Wash your hands. We're all in this together. Please let us know in the comment section below what you guys know about Armenian food. Please let us know another enclave or type of food that you would like to see us check out in the LA area. And until next time, guys, stay safe. We out. Peace. Hey, are you handing me a bag of lemons? The lemons are supposed to go on the lemon juice.