A fan-favorite Armenian pop-up with one of the city’s viral sandwiches launches its first restaurant

Juicy, dripping with cheese sauce and so formidable it’s impossible to eat gracefully, one of L.A.’s best pastrami sandwiches has returned. Arthur Grigoryan’s pastrami basturma pita went viral through the many phases of Yerord Mas Bakery & Deli, which started as a pop-up seven years ago. His ode to Armenian cuisine is now open as a counter-service restaurant in Glendale.

Grigoryan’s Yerord Mas (also written as III Mas) traces his family’s roots through Armenia, Syria, Egypt and Los Angeles, and pulls its name from the“Third District” neighborhood of Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, where his father grew up.

Grigoryan and his wife, Takouhi, are serving L.A. spins on the beef tartare-like chi kyuftah, here topped with an Aleppo-pepper and Sichuan chili crisp. There’s more traditional Armenian cuisine too, such as the yogurt kyuftah native to his great-grandparents’ region of Gaziantep — historically called Aintab, now in Turkey.

“Our food is just as complicated as our history and the politics in the region, because it’s a cuisine shaped by the empires that have dominated the region throughout the ages,” he said. “It’s kind of trying to tell the story of my family and the journey that they’ve been on.”

After the Armenian genocide, his paternal grandmother’s family moved to Egypt, while his paternal grandfather’s relocated to Syria. These influences weave their way into Grigoryan’s cooking (he grew up eating pita more than the Armenian-traditional lavash, for instance, and it formed the base of what would become his most popular dish).

He’s also serving a Middle Eastern fish curry inspired by his Iraqi extended family; the backbone of the dish is a chaldean spice blend, and he and his team toast and grind all 15 of its spices and aromatics in house. He’s serving a pistachio hummus recipe from 14th-century Egypt, seasoned with mint, preserved lemon and a house-made baharat spice blend.

Grigoryan began cooking professionally at 18. He moved to France to attend culinary school and interned abroad, and couldn’t help but notice the community gathering in France’s tabacs, bistros, brasseries and wine bars — some customers every single night. Someday, he thought, he’d build that for L.A.’s Armenian contingent.

Yerord Mas chef-owner Arthur Grigoryan in the kitchen of his Glendale restaurant.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

“I always wanted to open a restaurant that my community can be proud of,” he said, “I wanted to give the people of Glendale and the Armenian community a place where we can share our culture and heritage, and our history.”

When he returned to L.A. around 2016, Grigoryan spent time in multiple Nancy Silverton kitchens, working his way from her pizzeria to her osteria and its pasta station. In 2018 he left to launch Yerord Mas, at the time an Armenian-leaning pop-up dinner series run out of his family’s home in Sherman Oaks.

He popped up throughout the city, launched a ghost kitchen and joined Smorgasburg with what’s become Grigoryan’s signature dish: the plump, cheese-dripping basturma pita.

After a taste of Texas-style smoked brisket in 2017, he began to experiment. Now his version of basturma is made more similarly to pastrami than traditional, fully-cured beef. At Yerord Mas it’s brined and smoked like pastrami, but also coated in the signature basturma spice blend of chaimen.

The dish is a labor of love, with brisket brining for two weeks, then smoking for 12 hours. The pita is also a multiday process spread between fermentation, hours of hand-portioning and further resting.

Aintab-style yogurt kyuftah, in honor of chef and co-owner Arthur Grigoryan’s great-grandparents, at the new Yerord Mas in Glendale.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

He’s using the new kitchen space to experiment but also to perfect. Some of the restaurant’s dishes, such as the hempseed- and bulgur-stuffed grape leaves, haven’t been seen since Yerord Mas’ days as a backyard pop-up.

“We’re just revisiting it and trying to make it better,” Grigoryan said.

The goal is to expand palates and preconceptions beyond the kebab, but Grigoryan plans on introducing some to the menu via sidewalk grilling once the weather warms. He’s planning a weekly kebab omakase, as well as alfresco seating.

“The goal is to kind of show the yin and yang of our cuisine,” he said. “I saw how French culinary history has so many recipes documented. It made me think, ‘Armenians have a 6,000-plus-year history. There has to be something on our side of the world as well.’”

Yerord Mas is located at 6800 San Fernando Road in Glendale, and is open from 5 to 10 p.m. Thursday to Sunday.