An exceptionally rambunctious child, it seemed the only time Aline Kamakian slowed down was to help her grandmother, Manouchag, prepare a weekend Armenian feast for the entire family. In the kitchen, she and her cousins formed an assembly line, each youngster tasked with an individual responsibility such as washing parsley, rolling pastry or chopping onions. The resultant dishes could vary in quality, but that never bothered Manouchag.
“She’d say: ‘Just put your heart in it and it will be great.’ Even the worst things we made, my grandmother would proudly put them on the dinner table,” says Kamakian.
Now, using her grandmother’s recipes, Kamakian and her cousin Serge Maacaron have opened the UAE’s first Armenian restaurant in Dubai, Mayrig (meaning “mother” in Armenian). With her shock of curly red hair and warm smile, the insurance broker has become something of an ambassador for Armenian food, introducing the formerly homebound cuisine to a wider audience and also writing a book on the subject.
Though Manouchag died in 1984, the routine of a Sunday dinner with the family has continued. It was during one such gathering in 2003 that Kamakian and Maacaron, disappointed with Beirut’s dining scene, decided that the Armenian food made in their homes was better than any restaurant’s and it was time other people knew it, too.
The following Wednesday they found their first location in Beirut, opening the restaurant a mere four months later. For the first six years Kamakian worked in the kitchen, alongside Maacaron and a staff of 30, while simultaneously running her insurance brokerage, Insurance Investment Consultants.
“I would take calls on my earpiece while I was cooking. Sometimes I’d say: ‘Pass me the salt,’ and the client would say: ‘What?’ My insurance clients never knew that I had this other job,” she says.
Building on their early experiences in Manouchag’s kitchen, Maacaron and Kamakian formed a symbiotic partnership. She shone at preparing savoury foods and managing the restaurant’s operations. Maacaron excelled at presentation and crafting desserts.
The success of the Beirut location prompted the pair to open Mayrig Jeddah in 2011, followed by Dubai in October this year. With quirky decor and family photographs adorning the walls, each restaurant retains the intimacy of a home.
If the food tastes homemade, that’s because it is. Everything is made from scratch with natural ingredients. The dishes that require more handwork such as “manti” (lamb dumplings) and “su beureg” (noodle-like pastry layered with cheese) are still made in the Beirut kitchen by a staff of “mamas”, Armenian women in their 50s and 60s, many of whom were previously homemakers or domestic helpers.
Kamakian’s unusual choice in staffing is simple: “Because I wanted to taste the motherhood love in the food,” she says.
The intertwined concepts of motherhood, food and love are Manouchag’s legacy. Those weekend family gatherings were especially precious when compared with her own childhood as a survivor of the Armenian genocide.
In the beginning of the 20th century, the majority of Armenians lived within the Ottoman Empire. The reformist government of Young Turks, in an effort to unify the disintegrating empire, began the systematic expulsion of Christian minorities including Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks.
It is estimated that between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians were killed. Tens of thousands more were displaced, many of whom resettled in the Levant. For most, it continues to be the most traumatic period in Armenian history.
Manouchag was seven in 1915, the year of the genocide, one of countless children orphaned by the conflict. Rescued by French allied warships, she grew up in an orphanage in Cyprus before relocating to Beirut in 1932 to teach at the Armenian school. Food played an essential role in Manouchag’s memories of Armenia.
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