Off the map

There is a sad romance in Mt. Ararat, unrelated to its place in the Bible as Noah's landing. Its peak overlooks Armenia's capital, Yerevan, its white-capped outline is on the country's coat of arms, and the mountain is the very emblem of the Armenians' national identity.

Mt. Ararat is not in Armenia. Today, the peak stands a little more than 30 km over the closed Turkish border, in one of the only two countries Armenia does not have diplomatic relations with, for reasons so complicated it makes the Israel-Palestine conflict look cut and dry. The ending to that story, for now, is that the Armenians can only gaze at Ararat from afar, copy its crags onto currency and paint sentimental renderings, like the small mural on the wall of Prague's only Armenian restaurant, Noy.

Geopolitical considerations and bloody histories are in most ways absent from a culture's cuisine. Food offers comfort above all else, and traditional dishes are born of celebrations and happy events - the good things in life. Noy's dishes are made with this sentiment, simply and capably. In an age where countries' national cuisines take turns in the spotlight as the latest trend, it's exciting to taste dishes that are truly new to the uninitiated.

At the very last stop of the No. 9 tram in Žižkov, Noy's location is as obscure as Armenian cuisine is for many of us. The restaurant is a small, humbly appointed room with only a few tables tucked in the basement below a large herna bar. There are small touches that don't necessarily add up to a whole: pomegranate clay salt and pepper shakers, the Mt. Ararat mural, plastic vines and menu covers enhanced with plastic rhinestones.

The Smbuk was so good we ordered it on both visits. This 60 Kč appetizer has two long slices of grilled eggplant, folded back on themselves over a yogurt garlic sauce with slices of almonds. The eggplant flesh was creamy and contrasted wonderfully with the crisp outer skin. Noy is as generous as it is good. The Smbuk comes also with warm so-so pita bread and a house-made potato salad that is fresh, tangy and crispy with raw onions and parsley. The Lahmadžo is a gussied up lavash, baked until crispy with a topping of finely minced spiced beef, and pulled apart almost immediately by everyone at the table. A platter of house-made grape leaves are filled with rice and the same, seasoned ground beef, a tasty departure from the usual, often-bland rice-stuffed ones found around town.

Blinčik sounds like blintzes, and indeed the two names serve to describe the same thin pancake, in this case rolled around ground beef and crisped on the outside then blanketed in a garlic yogurt sauce.

The same sauce covers Pelmeně, one of Noy's best dishes, several handmade dumplings pocketing spiced ground beef, each the size of a child's fist. The potato salad reappears alongside these and every main dish, with additional house-made coleslaw seasoned with vinegar and dotted with fresh vegetables.

Three shish-kabob options are all delicious and carry a real flavor of the grill. Ground meat is shaped rectangularly on the spit, crisped but juicy, and pork cuts aren't too fatty and have great flavor. The chicken could be a matter of taste, depending how you feel about dark meat. The deeper flavor and higher fat content meant it held up fantastically on a spit and avoided being overly dry. All three kabobs came topped with fresh onions and, on the side, a spicy ketchup that's best left alone.

Garni Arach was the most beautiful dish, in presentation and taste. One half of an eggplant was stuffed with ground beef that was again full of beef flavor and in some parts almost crispy, likely fried in its own rendered fat. The pair worked together well but was even more sublime thanks to a generous amount of fresh dill, a simple herb that nevertheless gave the right amount of complexity. In addition to the aforementioned potato and coleslaw salads, this dish came with a fantastic tomato side that was wonderfully unique. The tomatoes had been cooked with onions and scrambled eggs, wispy like the strands in an egg-drop soup and soufflé-like.

The restaurant is undoubtedly family-owned; family members came and went around a table in the corner while kids occasionally wandered in from the back. On both visits, service was by the same cheerful man who didn't understand English but was patient and smiling while we tried to work out what we wanted and careful about clearing dishes at just the right moment. He became giddy when a companion translated to him how much we had enjoyed the food. In turn, he asked her to tell me he would be happy to marry me, if I wished. So, take my assessment of service with a grain of salt: It may be skewed by excessive flattery.

But my assessment of the food is only influenced by truly great dishes, some of them a happy surprise for diners who think they've tried it all, and all of them humble insights into a nation you might not always think about amid the global clamor of a shrinking, changing world.

Claire Compton can be reached at
ccompton@praguepost.com