October 2, 2002

SINCE OURS IS a "narcissistic city," as Wilkes Bashford told the San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks ago – well and truly spilling the beans – it sometimes becomes necessary to seek out less sultry airs. The air out on Brotherhood Way on a recent Saturday afternoon in September was cool and fresh – hardly narcissistic at all, really, and perfect for the 45th annual Armenian cultural bazaar, which consisted largely of food.

When we think of Armenian food, do we think of anything in particular? Armenia itself has been, like Poland, a nation frequently subsumed by other nations – Ottoman Turkey and Soviet Russia, to name two prominent examples. Yet Armenia can claim, among other things, to be the first Christian nation; its principal saint, Gregory the Illuminator (c.257-c.337 C.E.), "preached in the national language and used it for the liturgy," according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, and by so doing "helped to give the Armenian Church the markedly national character that it still has, more, perhaps, than any other in Christendom."

So it was at a church unsurprisingly consecrated to Gregory (St. Gregory Armenian Apostolic Church) that the local Armenian community set out its annual feast – a line of farmers market-style grills outside, offering kebabs and other such treats, and inside, a vast buffet whose wealth of dishes suggested the wide influences that have swept across Armenia over the centuries. When you find yourself facing a choice between stuffed grape leaves and stuffed cabbage, between spinach wrapped in flaky pastry and meatballs filled with onion, you know you stand at the crossroads of north and south, east and west, and you are more than usually aware that the variety of the food before you reflects the dominant theme in human history: the constant migrations, displacements, and minglings of populations.

I was quite taken with the spinach-pastry dish, spinach boereg. It had a taste I recognized but couldn't identify. Mint, I decided, but I wasn't sure, so I asked one of the women working the buffet. She gave me a sly smile, as if I were asking her to divulge one of those kitchen secrets mothers hold so dear. As, of course, I was.

"Spices," she said simply.

"Spices?"

"Spices." She gave a conspiratorial glance left and right. "Dill," she whispered.

Dill! Eureka! Do they say "Eureka!" in Armenia? Or am I thinking of somewhere else – Greece, perhaps? To be continued ...