Armenia the Beautiful

At the Hye Plaza in East Hollywood, you can book a trip to Yerevan, replace your contact lenses or insure your Saab, all without speaking anything but Armenian. If you’re in a mood for music, you might stop by Pe-Ko, where you can buy Lebanese disco records, also tapes by Harut, the soulful Palm Springs resident who’s more or less an Armenian-language Rod Stewart. There are plenty of imported belly-dance videos and obscure American horror movies to rent there too: “Night of a Thousand Cats,” stuff like that.

Whether you ask for the tip or not, the guys behind the Pe-Ko counter, who know from Armenian food, will suggest that you check out Caroussel Restaurant next door, where the air conditioning is good and the kebabs are tasty. They eat there almost every day themselves.

Caroussel is a large, airy rec room of a restaurant, a basic place with a mirrored ball on the ceiling for communion parties, and tables long enough to accommodate either large families or several pairs of hungry strangers. A photomural of a fishing scene decorates one wall, a poster of a merry-go-round horse another. Crooned Armenian pop, the kind that sounds rather like Julio Iglesias, drones away. It’s pretty wholesome--nothing stronger than the sour yogurt drink tun is served--and also very friendly. Bring a crowd.

“You must be at least half-Armenian by now,” the waitress said the second time I came in. “ You explain the food to your friends.”

And it sort of needs to be explained, because appetizers are listed on the menu in Armenian transliteration without explanation.

The first thing to know about, especially on a hot afternoon, is the cool, Syrian-style dip muhammara , an extraordinary brick-red paste made from red peppers and ground walnuts that packs a cumin wallop and is complex as wine. It tastes something like a more delicate Mexican chorizo, but without the 1300 calories of hog grease. You can scoop it up with pita or daub it on everything in sight; it goes especially well with kebabs.

“Hey, this stuff is like catsup,” one friend says.

Wrong: muhammara tastes good.

Humus is the usual stuff, smooth and rich, seasoned with an extra dose of sesame, best when spiked with chunks of the sweet, coarsely ground Armenian sausage called sujuk .

On a hot day, try another paste, chi kofta , a dish of finely ground bulgur wheat and raw lamb that’s sort of the Armenian steak tartare, clean-tasting and subtly spiced, garnished with spears of raw onion, a perfect light lunch. You can get kofta cooked, too, fried into little wheaty capsules. Maani are small, soft links of sausage, strongly spiced with cinnamon and very good. Arayes seems the Armenian equivalent of the Sloppy Joe, a savory ground-meat/tomato mixture sandwiched in pita--a dollop of muhammara , if you happen to have an order, sends it over the top.

Eggplant salad is extremely simple, chopped with onion, tomato and green pepper, doused with lemon, garlic and olive oil, but delicious, the sort of earthy dish you might expect to be served in a country restaurant somewhere in Eastern Europe. Tabbouleh , chopped parsely salad brightly flavored with mint, tastes as green as it looks; artichoke salad, what seemed to be store-bought artichoke hearts pepped up with spices and canned mushrooms, is less successful.

But what almost everybody seems to order is one of the kebab platters, big piles of grilled, marinated pork or lamb or chicken or liver that come with roasted peppers, a grilled tomato, a good green salad. Each kebab is served with a stack of hot pita bread that has been smeared with a spicy tomato sauce. And you get a huge plate of pickles, too: green and black olives; chile-hot turnip sticks dyed scarlet with beet juice; soft slabs of salty feta cheese.

Caroussel Restaurant, 5112 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, (213) 660-8060. Open daily, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Cash only. No alcohol. Lot parking. Dinner for two, food only, $16-$25.