Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [44]
Was it possible that a people with a unique language and faith, who had retained such a strong sense of identity over the centuries, nonetheless had no cuisine of its own?
Armed with these linguistics lessons, I paid a visit to Sevan Bakery in Flushing, Queens, an Armenian market run by Arthur Matevossian, a recent immigrant from Yerevan, Armenia. When I asked him why so many popular Armenian dishes had Turkish names, his smile disappeared. “I don’t know, but there is no such thing as Turkish cuisine!” he shouted. Meanwhile, an elegantly dressed customer, Diane Piranian, making her regular weekly purchase of manti, told me that she was the granddaughter of General Sebouh, a major figure in the Armenian revolutionary movement in Turkey. After surviving the massacres of 1915, he moved to the U.S. and opened a grocery store. “Whatever the Turks eat, they stole from us!” Piranian affirmed in a loud whisper.
Ethnic pride (and a deeply troubled relationship with Turkey) notwithstanding, my compatriots were only partly wrong. In the fifteenth century, says Perry, when Mehmet the Conqueror won Constantinople, the city was nearly deserted. Mehmet ordered it repopulated, half by Turks and half by other peoples: Armenians, Jews, Greeks, and even some French and Italians. Soon, in the legendary kitchens of his Topkapı Palace, cooks of every nationality worked side by side, developing modern Turkish cuisine, and all the cultures of Constantinople added a few of their own ingredients.
But according to Perry, there is one dish that Turks always credit to Armenians, an appetizer called topik. He traces its provenance to the late Ottoman period in Constantinople, where lively pubs called meyhanes were the only places men could drink. Since Islam frowned on alcohol, meyhanes were often run by Armenians. They served elaborate spreads of meze, dishes designed to be “particularly good for cushioning the stomach so one could drink a lot.” Topik, a chickpea puree layered with currants and pine nuts, fits the bill. At least Armenians got credit for one dish, even if it was basically a bar snack that neither I nor any of my Armenian friends in the U.S. had ever tasted.
On a recent trip to Turkey, I found myself far from Istanbul’s meyhanes, spending a long day under the late-July sun of Southeastern Anatolia. I had been hiking with a team of researchers up steep hills and over slippery rocks, deciphering maps, trying to determine the origins of various architectural ruins. At each site, we looked around and debated: Had this been Armenian? Kurdish? Assyrian? The legacies of these once-thriving minority populations are unacknowledged by Turkish authorities, adding another layer of pathos to a poor and troubled part of the country.
So it was something of a relief to leave these sites behind at the end of the day and head into Van, the provincial capital, and search for a place to eat dinner. In the city center, among tea houses and tiny shops, I looked up and found myself in front of a restaurant whose gleaming glass window was painted in huge, bright yellow letters with one word: Kebabistan.
Could it be that simple? I was in the land of kebab, and—at least until the next day’s work—that was all I really needed to know.
Recommended Resources
Armenian Heritage Organization (AHO) (armenian heritage.com)
Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA), Watertown, Massachusetts (617 926 2562 / almainc.org)
Armenian National Institute (ANI), Washington, D.C. (202 383 9009 / armenian-genocide.org)
Armenian Research Center, University of Michigan-Dearborn