To a Choice Café in Downtown Yerevan
plus a recipe for a springtime tarragon salad with juicy black grapes and feta
How promising can a café be if you enter it via a touristy trinket shop?
If you are in the Armenian capital, Yerevan, and it is a courtyard café named Abovyan 12, then the answer is ‘surprisingly so’.
Passing through the shop and into the outdoors restaurant, vines climb and twist skywards ensuring that the tables, covered in red and black cloths, similar to Scottish Laronde tartan, are kept shaded.
Above, up some steps, is an art gallery displaying Parajanovian-style paintings and collages. It isn’t hard to imagine the maestro himself dining somewhere like this, holding court in a shadowy corner.
In the centre of the courtyard, a tap constantly runs into a basin holding
shiny watermelons, the sound itself cooling, while on the menu you’ll find spas (yogurt soup), almost half the price of all other soups as it is an essential remedy in warmer months.
As well as spas, I like to order a simple olive lahmacun at Abovyan 12 which is popular and also easy to make at home. But it is a herb-heavy salad, rather than olive lahmacun or spas, that I fell in love with at this café.
Why? Because it was both brave and tempting…