They bought a Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz and hired servants. Their neighbors were doctors and lawyers. Mardiros and his family moved into a mansion in Verdugo Hills. Zankou restaurants began popping up in Glendale, Van Nuys, Anaheim and Pasadena. In exchange, Mardiros would own the Zankou brand and launch a chain. Mardiros signed over his stake in the original restaurant to his parents and two sisters. A year before founder Vartkes’ death, the family agreed to a split. Zankou was bringing in $2 million a year and he wanted to build a large chain of restaurants. The Pepsi Company had offered them $30 million for the Zankou chain. There had been a major schism in the Iskenderian family. From Glendale to Hollywood, old Armenian ladies “sat crooked and talked straight” as they tried to fathom the shame of an Armenian son taking his mother’s life. He then turned the gun on himself and took his own life.Īs the story spread through Los Angeles, the local Armenian community fell into shock. He entered their home, drank lemonade with them, and calmly shot them to death. He drove across town to the home of his younger sister Dzovig and mother Margrit. On a Tuesday morning in January 2003, he woke early, donned a white silk suit and left his house with two handguns.
In 2002, Mardiros was diagnosed with terminal brain and colon cancer. And then, the story becomes bizarre and tragic. He built a loyal following and by the mid-90s, Zankou was an informal Los Angeles landmark. (Jonathan Gold wrote that “Nothing in heaven or on earth compared with the garlic paste.”) Vartkes died in 1992 and his son Mardiros took over the restaurant. The restaurant’s calling card was its golden tender chicken cooked with a simple salt rub and the tangy garlic sauce. Located near Kaiser Hospital and the original Scientology Center, the flagship restaurant became a lunch spot of choice for local nurses and Ron Hubbard devotees. The first Zankou Chicken opened in 1983, quickly gaining favor with LA’s Middle Eastern population. Twenty years later, the Iskenderians moved to Los Angeles and introduced their family recipes to American palates. In 1962, Vartkes Iskenderian opened a small restaurant with just two dishes on the menu: chicken and Lule beef kebab.
#ZANKOU CHICKEN GARLIC SAUCE DRIVERS#
There would always be a table of LA cops seated in a corner while gangbangers and Armenian cab drivers devoured chicken nearby. The restaurant was a melting pot of socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds. Here we watched unsuspecting drivers bottom out their cars navigating the poorly placed mini-mall driveway. The best Zankou table was the four-top Formica near the rear window. I knew a vegetarian who said Zankou’s chicken was the sole exception in his avoidance of meat.
The restaurant was a great place to spot B-grade celebrities like Nipsey Russell, Arte Johnson and my favorite celebrity sighting, Antonio Fargas who played “Huggy Bear” on Starsky & Hutch. We immersed ourselves in the Shawerma & Chicken Tarna, dipping into the garlic paste with every bite. Known for their spit-roasted rotisserie chicken and luscious garlic paste, Zankou admirers include Pulitzer-prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold, who wrote that Zankou is “good enough to tempt even an ardent Zionist to flirt with the other side.” The musician Beck lyricized Zankou in his song “Debra,” singing that their chicken was “ripe for the pickin’.” Larry David devoted an entire episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm to Zankou framing the restaurant as a Palestinian diner where Jews secretly met their mistresses.īack in the 1980s when I lived in neighboring Los Feliz, I met my pothead friends at Zankou. The site is the original Zankou Chicken, a humble Lebanese restaurant named after a river in Armenia. In a nondescript mini-mall in a rundown section of East Hollywood known as “Little Armenia” sits an innocuous eatery wedged between a laundromat and a liquor store.
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