RESTAURANT REVIEW : Mom, Pop Make You Feel Welcome at Elena’s

One of the great culinary treasures of any city is its neighborhood, family operated restaurants.

Not the crassly self-defined “family restaurants” that are cut from a corporate mold. I mean the mom-and-pop places usually created and operated by a husband and wife who, one hopes, enjoy spending virtually every hour of their lives together.

Elena and Haroutioun Tchentchenian are one such team. They are ethnic Armenians from Athens who run Elena’s Greek Armenian Restaurant in Glendale.

As you enter the small space that serves as the restaurant’s vestibule, cash counter and kitchen, you might see Elena grilling lulu kebab (sausage-shaped rolls of spiced chopped beef) or tangy chicken shish kebab.

Elena’s is the sort of place that could put cooking at home out of business. Everything on the brief menu exudes the unself-conscious vitality of confident home cooking--at prices difficult to compete with at home.

None of the main dishes cost more than $8, and most are accompanied by a delicate rice pilaf and a simple but well-dressed salad or an excellent mint-and-lemon-perfumed lentil soup and a roasted green pepper.

Among them, if you can believe it, are deftly seasoned lamb chops (three of them!) and a plate of nine or so slender stuffed grape leaves, or dolma, with a spirited garlic yogurt sauce.

Then there’s the winner-take-all lamb chop, shish kebab and lulu kebab combination plate. A perfectly OK baked chicken was the only dish that didn’t beckon me back for more.

The drink and dessert lists are even more limited than the rest of the menu. Aside from the usual sodas, milk and tea, there is “yogurt milk,” which is the salty Near Eastern yogurt drink tahn , and sectarian coffee--in this case it’s called Armenian.

An excellent crunchy and relatively unsweet baklava--the only dessert--is a natural complement to the thick coffee.

One day as the sound of raindrops beat down on the thin roof of the enclosed, Astroturf-carpeted patio, I sat at a table covered with a plastic, red-and-white checked cloth and felt as if I were in a coastal taverna on the island of Crete.

My companion looked appreciatively around the patio--at the plastic plants (about nine varieties) and plastic flowers (at least 13 different kinds), at the carpet sweeper leaning in one corner (the Astroturf is well-groomed)--and said appreciatively, “I feel like Shirley Valentine.”

Well, if that film heroine were in Elena’s Restaurant, she might well think that she was still on her racy escape to Greece.

Elena’s, 1000 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale. (818) 241-5730. Open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday; closed Sunday. No alcohol, but you may bring your own beer or wine. Street parking. Cash only. Dinner for two, $14 to $20.