Tavern Yerevan: Armenian Cuisine with Music and a Live Show
There's a tree growing in the kitchen of one Yerevan restaurant. Not a potted plant by the door: the trunk comes up out of the floor between the stainless steel counters, and you can see it from the street through the glass wall. When the Riverside branch by the Hrazdan River was built, they left the tree standing and built the kitchen around it - and I spent longer looking at it than at the menu.
Tavern Yerevan (Armenian: Պանդոկ Երևան) is a chain of restaurants in Yerevan that add an evening show to traditional Armenian cooking: live music, dancing and, down by the river, fire. There is more than one location, and the same name doesn't mean the same evening.
Shashlik by the Cinema and a Name Taken from the City
The name was chosen so that anyone could read it: tavern in plain English, Yerevan the city, and the Armenian sign Պանդոկ Երևան saying the same thing with the word pandok, an inn. Founder Davit Yeremyan laid claim to the city in that name long before he owned anything in it. In 2001 he borrowed a few hundred dollars from his sister and sold shashlik from a stand outside the Rossia cinema; he opened his first tavern in 2006 on Khorenatsi Street, and by all accounts it never had enough tables. That one tavern has grown into Yeremyan Projects, a group with more than ten brands, among them Lavash Restaurant.
Three Addresses Under One Sign
Riverside on Isakov Avenue is the youngest, opened in 2018, and also the largest: hundreds of seats, most of them in the garden by the river, where a summer evening is a shade more bearable than in the center. Few tourists make it out here, but Armenians come to celebrate; the guests at the tables around me that night were dressed as if for a wedding. It's my second favorite restaurant in Yerevan, right behind Lavash, and it's the one with the tree in the kitchen.
Tavern Yerevan Riverside
Khorenatsi is the very first one, from 2006, and it looks the part: brick walls, wooden beams, the band playing indoors between the tables. Its menu is different from Riverside's and the cooking a notch plainer, though still very good. Amiryan is downtown, a short walk from Republic Square, and it's the most eye-catching of the three, and without a reservation you won't get in for dinner - I tried.
Tavern Yerevan Khorenatsi
Tavern Yerevan Amiryan
What Plays with Dinner and What the View Costs
Dinner with a band is not this chain's invention; they play at Pandok Yerevan as well, and in the hall of the Ani hotel, and a folk ensemble in a big restaurant surprises nobody here. The difference is in the scale. At Khorenatsi it means Armenian folk songs sung and played on traditional instruments, the duduk made of apricot wood among them; at Amiryan the folk songs play every evening except Sunday. Riverside has a large stage out in the garden and a show that runs for hours: film themes in concert arrangement, an Armenian pop singer and, after dark, a performance that brings together theater, choreography and fire. It takes twenty minutes just to carry the props onstage before that final act, and I have never seen a better performance in a restaurant.
At Riverside you pay for the show, and in a way I haven't come across anywhere else: the cover charge is per table rather than per person, and it depends on how good your view of the stage is. The best table costs 4,000 AMD (9.60 EUR), one off to the side 2,000 AMD (4.80 EUR) and a table with the worst view 1,000 AMD (2.40 EUR); with four of you it works out at a quarter each. As everywhere else in the city, ten percent service is added to the bill automatically, though not to the cover charge. And with a drink in your hand you can go and stand right in front of the stage anyway, which makes the cheap table more of a place to leave your bag. At Khorenatsi and Amiryan the music costs nothing. Booking: I walked into Riverside alone and on spec, and after a bit of negotiating (more a matter of language than of space) they seated me, even though the place was almost full; at Amiryan you won't get anywhere without a reservation, and at Khorenatsi on a weekday you probably don't need one.
Tjvjik by the River and Putuk from the Front Row
I got to Riverside on my way back from tasting the Ararat and Noy brandies, both of which are a short walk away. I ordered beef tjvjik and an aveluk salad, both flawless, and with them the Tres Belle cocktail: gin, freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, raspberry syrup and lime. It arrives under a glass dome full of smoke, on a tray scattered with petals, and the waiter lifts the dome at your table, so the first sip goes in through your nose. It tastes sweet and sour, with the pomegranate holding a sour line against the syrup, and the smoke clings to the glass longer than it lingers in the drink. It came to 4,000 AMD (9.60 EUR), and for that much spectacle and that much flavor it's a fair price.
At Khorenatsi I came on a Wednesday, the room was empty apart from a few tables and the show was about to start, so I moved straight to the front row. The putuk soup was excellent, the veal khashlama just as good, and the band played for a handful of tables exactly as it would for a full house. At Amiryan, the third address with the same sign, they wouldn't let me in without a reservation - every table was taken.
