![]() The food caught on with LA's growing Middle Eastern population, as well as the rest of us, and soon Mardiros was ready to expand. Eventually, Mardiros's idea won out.Īnd so in 1983, in a mini-mall in Eastern Hollywood, the Iskenderians started serving their inimitable chicken along with baba ghanoush, schwarma, and of course the famous garlic paste developed by Mardiros's mother, Margrit. When Vartkes and Markrid Iskenderian came to America with their children, the couple at first attempted a dry cleaning business, thinking they'd leave Zankou behind, but their son, Mardiros, persisted with the idea of bringing Zankou to LA. Zankou is the name of a river in Armenia, but the garlic paste and the chicken restaurants originate in 60s-era Beirut, Lebanon, where the many Armeninans settled after fleeing the genocide. (The following owes a great debt to Mark Arax's in-depth LA Magazine article, " The Zankou Chicken Murders"-well worth a read for those who like an extra dose of triple-homicide-infused garlic paste with their spit-fired chicken.) But since Beck and Jonathan Gold and Larry David have already given you every reason to love the chicken, here is the rest of the story. It's not exactly dinner table conversation, and for good reason: The mythology of the chicken tends to overpower the mythology of the murders in the popular mind. It's a story that reads like a mini-epic, taking us from Armenia to Lebanon to Los Angeles, where it turns dark as any Hollywood noir. Despite having no pro-Palestine posters hanging in its real-life locations, Zankou is easily recognizable as inspiration for Al Abbas from the signature yellow T-shirts worn by its staff-and of course its chicken, so delicious it could be used to hasten the Middle East peace process.īut beyond the garlic paste curtain at the real-life Zankou lies a tale far from peaceful. And Zankou appears as the fictional Palestinian-run Al Abbas, which opens adjacent to Goldblatt's Deli to the ire of Larry's Zionist-leaning friends (who still allow that the chicken is spectacular). "Palestinian Chicken" is Curb at its best: hilarious and hyperbolic, holding up politics and systems of belief and mocking them effortlessly, all through the filter of Zankou's deliciously schmaltzy chicken skin and Larry's characteristic slapstick outrage.Ĭurb makes no mention of the iconic garlic paste. ![]() How good is it? Thought by many to be the best in LA, Zankou's chicken has been praised by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Jonathan Gold in his book Counter Intelligence, where-blaspheming the garlic paste-he writes, "such chicken really needs no embellishment." Zankou has been name-checked in the outrageous Beck love-triangle ballad " Debra" as "a real good meal." And Zankou's mythology so permeates the food culture of LA, it's been fictionalized on Larry David's show Curb Your Enthusiasm, where the best roast chicken joint in Los Angeles plays a central role in an episode called "Palestinian Chicken." But the story of Zankou is, first and foremost, the story of legitimately delicious roast chicken. And they've responded with similar reticence to queries about the infamous " Zankou murders," a triple homicide, and the irrevocable schism in the family-owned business, now forever tarnished by events of such tragic proportion. ![]() ![]() ![]() When I've asked Zankou brass for the recipe for the garlic paste, they demure, saying it's a secret Iskenderian family recipe from the old country. I usually ask for extra garlic paste on the side, scooping it up with one of those tiny highlighter-yellow pickled Cascabella peppers and spreading it across the top layer of dark meat and fire-kissed caramelized skin that spills out of the pita like regurgitation from a mama bird's loving mouth. Forgive me for playing that fantasy out to its natural end-I've caught myself dreaming about it more than a time or two! And a recurring bathtub dream is a good indicator of just how fierce my adoration of that heavenly white paste is, as well as how I feel generally about Zankou, LA's family-owned Armenian roast chicken chain.Īt Zankou, the garlic paste comes smeared inside a pita stuffed with bright magenta pickled turnips, chopped tomatoes, and-the main event-hunks of deliciously moist spit-fire-roasted marinated chicken in my favorite, the superlative tarna wrap. ![]()
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