Mediterranean food is a category that means almost nothing until you locate it, and in Los Angeles it resolves into three quite specific traditions in three quite specific places. There is Armenian cooking in Glendale and East Hollywood, Levantine cooking spread across the city and concentrated in a few serious rooms, and a newer Californian interpretation of both that has produced some of the best restaurants in the city. Searching mediterranean food here without knowing which of those you want is how you end up with a disappointing wrap.
Glendale, Little Armenia and the Arts District are three different meals under one word. Ask Karpo which of them is near you tonight and what the room is actually known for.
Glendale, which is the real answer
Glendale has one of the largest Armenian communities anywhere outside Armenia, and its food is the least publicised great cuisine in Los Angeles County. Mini Kabob on Vine Street is the emblem — a tiny family operation turning out some of the best grilled meat in the region from a kitchen the size of a garage, with a queue that forms because word of mouth is the only advertising it has ever needed. Carousel, on North Brand Boulevard, is the other pole: a full Armenian-Lebanese room built for the long table, where mezze arrives in a quantity that has to be seen.
The difference between these two is format rather than quality. Mini Kabob is a counter and a wait and a plate of extraordinary kebab. Carousel is an event: fifteen or twenty small dishes across a table, everyone reaching, three hours gone. If you are going to Glendale for the first time and there are four or more of you, do the second one.
Little Armenia and East Hollywood
The stretch of East Hollywood formally designated Little Armenia carries a different and older layer of the same food culture, alongside a substantial Lebanese and Syrian presence. Marouch on Santa Monica Boulevard has been the reference room here for decades — Lebanese and Armenian cooking done conservatively and well, in a room that has never bothered to be fashionable. It is the sort of restaurant where the mezze section of the menu is longer than the mains and should be treated as the main event.
This neighbourhood is also home to the garlic sauce that half of Los Angeles has strong feelings about. Zankou Chicken built a regional institution on rotisserie chicken and a fiercely garlicky toum, and while it has expanded well beyond its origins, the fundamental proposition — a whole chicken, the sauce, pickles, bread, feeding four people cheaply — remains one of the best-value meals in the county.
The Californian interpretation
Bavel, at 500 Mateo Street in the Arts District, is where this cooking meets the modern Los Angeles restaurant and produces something that is neither traditional nor a dilution. The hummus is the dish everyone talks about and it deserves it; the bread programme is the reason the table works; and the cooking draws on Israeli, Moroccan, Turkish and Egyptian threads rather than pretending to a single origin. It books two to four weeks ahead for a weekend.
Kismet in Los Feliz comes at the same material from a lighter angle — a bright room, vegetable-forward plates, a menu that reads Californian and eats Eastern Mediterranean. It is the easier booking of the two and the better lunch. Between them these rooms have done something useful: they made this food a destination in a city that already had it everywhere and largely took it for granted.
How to order a table
The structural mistake at a Mediterranean table is ordering like a Western restaurant — one starter and one main per person. The food is built for the middle of the table, and the correct approach is a spread. For four people: three or four cold mezze, two hot ones, bread, and then one or two grilled things to share. The dips are not a prelude to the meal; along with the bread, they are half of it.
A few specifics worth knowing. Hummus is judged on texture and on the quality of the tahini rather than on seasoning, and the best versions taste of sesame as much as chickpea. Good bread arrives hot and does not survive fifteen minutes, so eat it when it lands. Ask what is grilled over charcoal rather than gas, because at a kebab house that single fact determines the entire meal. And if there is a house pickle plate, order it — it is the thing that makes a rich table keep working into its second hour.
What this food costs, and why it is good value
The price range here is unusually wide for a single category. A counter meal in Glendale can feed two people generously for the cost of one appetiser in the Arts District, and neither is bad value; they are different products. What makes the whole category worth seeking out is that the middle of the range is deep — there are dozens of family-run rooms across Glendale, East Hollywood and the Valley doing serious cooking at unremarkable prices, and almost none of them will ever appear on a national list.
That is the honest recommendation buried in this piece: the famous rooms are genuinely excellent and worth booking, and the best value in Mediterranean food in Los Angeles is at a strip-mall kebab counter in Glendale on a Wednesday, where the grill has been running for thirty years and nobody is writing about it.
Practical notes
Many of the family-run rooms are cash-preferred or have card minimums, and several close between lunch and dinner, so check before an afternoon visit. Glendale parking is easy compared with most of Los Angeles, with structures around Brand Boulevard that are cheap or free for a couple of hours. Portions across this category run large; over-ordering is the standard error and the leftovers are excellent the next day. Book the Arts District rooms weeks ahead and walk into the Glendale ones.
One note on fasting and dietary needs: this is among the easiest cuisines in the city for vegetarians, since a mezze table is largely vegetable-based by default, and most rooms will tell you plainly which dishes contain dairy or meat stock if you ask.
Tags: #MediterraneanFood #LosAngeles #Glendale #LittleArmenia #Hummus #Kebab #Mezze #ArmenianFood #LAEats #Restaurants #ArtsDistrict #LAFood #WhereToEatLA #LevantineFood
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Ask Karpo first
Want to know which Mediterranean room near you is open now, and whether it is a counter or a three-hour table? Ask Karpo before you drive to Glendale.
