Ishkhan: The Endemic Trout of Lake Sevan
These days Armenia's national fish is doing best in Kyrgyzstan. In Lake Issyk-Kul, where it was stocked in the 1930s on the advice of the Soviet academician Lev Berg, it reportedly grows to twenty kilos; back home Armenia's Red Book protects it, the IUCN lists it as extinct, and yet every restaurant on the shore of its native lake offers it right next to the shashlik.
Ishkhan (Armenian: իշխան) is a salmonid fish that in the wild lives only in Lake Sevan; in Armenian cuisine it is served whole, most often braised or poached with herbs and lemon. The contradiction has a simple explanation: the prince that lands on your plate wasn't born in the lake, but in a hatchery.
A Prince Named for Its Flavor
The Armenian word ishkhan means prince, and for centuries it was a hereditary noble title. The fish earned it for three things at once: its noble looks, its delicate flesh with almost no bones, and the fact that it is fussy and puts up with nothing but clean, cold water. In 1877 the Russian ichthyologist Karl Kessler simply turned the Armenian title into Latin and the species ended up as Salmo ischchan. Since Lake Sevan is the only place in the world where ishkhan has always lived, it is the most local dish you will find in Armenia: local and national at once, with no cousins across the border.
How the Prince Lost His Lake
There is not just one ishkhan. Ichthyologists distinguish four forms, depending on where and when they spawn: the winter and the summer bakhtak, the gegarkuni and the dwarf bojak. The winter bakhtak historically grew to 90 centimeters and fifteen kilograms; a farmed adult today runs about forty centimeters and half a kilo. What did the fish in was Soviet water management: from the 1930s Armenia drained the lake for irrigation and electricity, the level dropped by eighteen meters, and the shallows where the winter bakhtak spawned were left high and dry. On top of that, whitefish from Russian lakes was stocked in 1924 and ate into the ishkhan's food supply, and fishing was banned outright in 1978. The winter bakhtak and the bojak were gone before the 1980s according to the IUCN, while the remaining two forms hang on in hatcheries, from which they have been released back into the lake in recent years. Estimates of how many fish actually swim in Sevan today differ depending on who is counting.
How Ishkhan Is Eaten and What to Watch Out For
The restaurants by the lake cook ishkhan whole: braised or simmered with onion, tomatoes and herbs, grilled on a skewer as khorovats, baked with lemon, and more rarely in place of the meat in khashlama. The flesh is pale and delicate and has few bones, which is why nothing strong goes near it, only the acidity of lemon and fresh herbs. So the one piece of advice about ishkhan is this: ask where it comes from. Armenian shops routinely sell plain rainbow trout under the princely name - "rainbow ishkhan" in Armenian - and it has nothing to do with the lake and everything to do with a canny seller. The real thing costs more, is farmed under license, and it is easier to find by the lake than in Yerevan, where menus treat it as a special-occasion dish.
A Plate on the Shore of Sevan
I ate ishkhan in one of the restaurants around the lake, steamed. It came whole, skin and tail on, in a light broth with chili flakes, a slice of lemon, parsley and quartered boiled potatoes alongside. The flesh came off the bone without a knife and tasted delicate, almost sweet; the chili in the broth only warmed it, and the lemon and the herbs did the rest. There was nothing else on the plate. According to the international list, I had just eaten a fish that no longer exists. The bones on the rim of the plate said otherwise.
