Jan 11 Best Food in Gyumri So Far

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Re: Teaching - The students were much more willing to speak English today, so it was easier to communicate with them one-on-one.

Re: The rest of my day, ie food!

For breakfast, I tried tahn which is a salty yogurt drink. It is similar to kefir but thinner in consistency. It was also salty, which might be refreshing in the summer, when it is popular

GYUMRI GASTROHOUSE - probably my favorite meal so far

  • Pasus dolma - cabbage roll, filled with kidney beans, yellow peas, bulgur, onions. cumin and other Indian flavors
  • Aveluk salad - almost tastes like Chinese pickled mustard greens. Sweetness of greens balanced by raw minced garlic, but garlic not too overpowering. Finely chopped walnuts add nice nuttiness
  • Vana kalagosh - thick yellow lentil soup with matzoun (yogurt),  also dill, red pepper oil, and extra sweet, caramelized onions (so sweet I almost thought there were raisins), served with lavash. Sweet onions work well to contrast pepper oil (which was not too hot). Creaminess of yogurt contrasted the lentils. Lavash also quite smooth but still provided textural contrast
  • Khash - essentially an Armenian national dish, applauded as a hangover cure. Cow's feet and knee joint are boiled for hours to create a soothing bone broth. Served with good salt to taste and lavash for dipping, as well as raw garlic and radish for cutting the richness of the gelatinous meat
  • Panrkash - lavash bread, sandwiched with chechil cheese (like a salty, slightly tougher string cheese), topped with caramelized onions (but less than in kalagosh)
  • Traditional pochinz - cake made with roasted millet, honey, topped with finely chopped walnuts.. Soft, almost pudding like texture combined with lucious honey. Flavor reminded me of peas or something, deep flavor
  • Gata - looks like a plain croissant (but in danish form), but much more flavorful. Menu description - dough, sugar, butter, eggs, matzoun (yogurt). Closely associated with bagarch which uses the same ingredients except is not flaky. Upon closer examination, there is one layer of dough that has coarse sugar and that layer is wrapped in essentially croissant dough. This layer adds the complex flavors, so it probably contains the eggs and yogurt.
Then after lunch, we officially visited Vartanants Square, though we had passed by the first day. A good number of the buildings here are black from the volcanic tuff in the surrounding stone.




Look at the pretty street!

For dinner, we went to Ponchik Monchik which is a cluster of enclosures in the middle of a roundabout. The enclosures were decorated with pretty lights, which enticed us there. However, the food was not the greatest for the price - still fine by American standards but pretty expensive otherwise if you go for a full meal.
  • Omelette with basturma - basturma is air-dried beef also common in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Bulgaria. The basturma was incredibly salty, so it was basically inedible for me even with a beer to accompany. There was also a slight fermentation funk that had a bitter note at the end of a bite.
  • Salad
  • Ponchik with nutella - puffy donut (it's mostly hollow inside), not too sweet

Ponchik. Also look at how pretty the plate is. A lot of the plates thus far (at least at nicer placers such as Florence Gyumri) have color plates with complex shapes. Not sure if the shapes are intentional but they give them an artisanal and special look
  • Ararat beer - produced locally in Gyumri, light lager, not much hops, tasted pretty sweet (until I had some after dessert)



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