What is street food? Street food is good food that's not fancy. It's a great meal you can order quickly, yet without feeling like you're supposed to leave fast. It's food the locals usually know about--food that you don't feel strange eating by yourself, but are always glad to reveal to a special friend. Street food costs less than $10 per person. You order it at the counter, or at least pay for it there.
Zankou Chicken
by Richard Risemberg
In a nondescript strip mall in a dingy part of East Hollywood, where street traffic rumbles endlessly along Sunset Boulevard, churning black road dust into the air, and overweight prostitutes shuffle along the gray walls lining the street, the heart of a neighborhood the nervous commuter never sees reveals itself under the turquoise awning of the surprising Zankou Chicken.
Off the boulevard, cloistered in once-stately brick apartments, tired stucco dingbats, and shabby clapboard houses with dusty yards, lies an hidden ethnic enclave recently recognized by the city government with a blue sign proclaiming this to be "Little Armenia." Here, old ladies in bubushkas stroll up and down the sidewalk in pairs, wearing long woolen skirts, while their husbands gather round folding tables under the jacaranda trees to play endless rounds of backgammon. Young men with black goatees mutter into cell phones, and young women with weary, lovely dark eyes chase after boisterous children who babble in the language of a land they've never seen. Every porch, every balcony has its row of chairs, and every chair has its elder, and inside every door behind those porches and balconies rest the numerous descendants of those elders--and some days it seems that every last one of them has stopped in to eat at Zankou.
Zankou is the quintessetial Street Food shop: cheap, good, friendly, with a long line of appreciative repeat customers at the counter. Its specialty is roast chicken, whose quality I can't personally vouch for, as I am a vegatarian, but my girlfriend, a dedicated foodie, describes it as "moist and flavorful," and generally seconds the universal acclaim Zankou's birds receive from everyone who has ever mentioned them--in person or in the press, Armenian or not. Generally there are several dozen turning on spits in the array of ovens visible from the counter, and the flow of chicken to the public is steady.
The things I do eat--and there are many--are also worthy of acclaim. The felafel is intensely flavored, and you can request hummous or other additives if you require even intenser flavor. The muttabal (more familiar, perhaps, to many under the name "baba ganoush") is one of my favorite lunches, the hummous is classic, the stuffed grape leaves both delicate and spicy, and the pita bread always soft and fresh. Their tabbouleh is tangy with lemon and parsley and wonderfully refreshing, and the drink list includes mango juice and a yogurt drink called "tahn." There is also on hand a nearly sweetish garlic paste that is white as a cloud and as close to heaven, meant to be smeared on the chicken but a perfect addition to nearly any food on earth. Lamb and beef shawarmas and shish kebabs round out the menu. And nothing costs more than ten dollars.
As if that weren't enough, the staff, who work entirely too hard to take care of the crowds of customers, are friendly and bright-eyed, and always willing to add the little touches you may request for whatever you've ordered. If you have a favorite dish, they'll remember it, even if you don't drop by for weeks.
They just bought out the Mexican chicken joint that used to be next door and expanded into its space, so you'll always be able to sit down at one of their formica tables and enjoy your dish properly. The food may be cheap, but it deserves savoring. Give yourself the time to taste it--it will be time well spent.
Zankou Chicken, at the northeast corner of Sunset and Normandie, in Hollywood, California. Go there; eat well; be happy.
Richard Risemberg
Photo by G. S. Morey
