Food and Longing in the Armenian Diaspora

Some of my earliest childhood memories revolve around food, whether it was the fruit leather made from the plums grown in my grandparents’ garden, my mom delicately rolling cabbage leaves between her fingers to make dolma, or the gallons of homemade fig jam that neatly lined the floor of our garage.

I grew up in Los Angeles but was born in Iran to Armenian parents. During the Iran–Iraq War, my family relocated to Southern California as refugees, joining thousands of others from Iran who had taken the same path. As we left everything behind, pushed the reset button on life, and started all over in a new country, food became one of the constants in my life, defining my identity in ways I did not realize until I was much older.

The names of dishes I would rattle off if you asked me about Armenian food would differ widely from others of Armenian descent, depending on who you ask. An Armenian who hails from Lebanon, or one who grew up in the capital city of Yerevan, or even a third-generation Armenian American from Boston would all have different answers from me and from each other. 

Armenian history and geography transcend today’s borders, but one of the reasons much of these differences in our modern-day cuisine exist is the Armenian Genocide of 1915, when over one million were systematically killed by the Ottoman government, while hundreds of thousands were displaced. This resulted in a global diaspora, as survivors left their homeland to find refuge across the world. Many came to the United States, settling in cities like Fresno, Los Angeles, and Detroit, as well as across New England. Some went to Europe, and still others escaped to countries in which Armenians already had a longstanding presence, including Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iran.

“The food reminds us of what once was, the taste of longing,” Syrian Armenian chef Anto Kilislian says.

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