Unforgettable ARMENIAN FOOD Experience + Smoking Fish the Traditional Way! | Etchmiadzin, Armenia

I might have to say this is probably the best eggplant dish ever and I love the cheese. It's like a white cheese, I think there's also cream on top. I don't even know if I want to eat anything else but that plate. That plate is too good. Good afternoon everyone, this is David Hoffman from David's Been Here coming at you from beautiful Etchmiadze, Armenia. This is a small town located on a 20 minute drive outside of Yerevan and today we're going to visit the Machanet Cultural Center. Here we're going to do a master class, we're going to have some delicious lunch, Armenian food is so good and after this we're going to go back to Yerevan and explore the capital even deeper. Follow me into Machanet. Hey guys, I'm David's guide, Lusine and I'm going to show you around and we're going to start from the museum of this center. So this museum has a lot of different artifacts. They have like telephones, they have clay pots, one of the most interesting things they have here is this like medieval clay pipe and they would actually transport cow milk with this so they would milk the cow then transport it down to the village using this clay pipe. They have pottery here, this is from the 12th and 13th century and then they have some Bronze Age period pottery over here so that's like the 2nd century before Christ, right? Look at that, Bronze Age period and then this is really interesting. So what is this? It's a water jar and imagine the girls used to carry this to the closest water source to take water for their family and it's like, you can try it, it's really heavy. Is it? Yeah, even if it's empty, it's really heavy. I can't imagine how they carried this. Not so bad but it's empty so I mean if it's full, that's going to be really heavy. Oh my god, the women would carry this? They used to have quite strong girls. Yeah, for sure, for sure because that's really heavy. All the way at the back, they have a lady weaving rug so this is all wool rugs, correct? Wool. Yeah. So David, maybe you know that carpet weaving tradition in Armenia goes back to 14-15 centuries before Christ and by the way, the oldest carpet in the world you can find in Hermitage which is 5 centuries before Christ and guess what carpet is that? It's Armenian. Right. Yeah. In this cultural center, by the way, they are taking the natural wool and they are using natural color of the wool from the sheep and as you see, they are dividing the color tones of the wool and making threads and from these threads, they are weaving a beautiful carpet using old ornaments that you can find in Armenian manuscripts. Carpets here are a little different and here also in Armenia, carpets and rugs are different. Yes. Yeah, it's not the same thing because I always think it's the same but it's not. It's not. And this lady right here, she's weaving a carpet and as you can see, there's a different style of the knot, the way they do it here in Armenia. They twist it differently compared to the Persian. Yeah, we do double knot. You do double knot. So I know in Iran, it's a little different but here, it's like this. So the cultural center actually reminds me of like a farmhouse. I don't know if that's what it's supposed to resemble, a farmhouse but I've seen something like this in Bulgaria as well, very similar style but you were telling me that here, it's not just food. It's like masterclasses. It's not just a restaurant. It's masterclasses. It's representing different aspects of Armenian culture and at the same time, this is a cultural big school where different kids are coming to study and they do also a lot of donations for this center for the kids with special needs to get free education in this center. We're going to actually start off by eating some appetizers before we do the masterclass. I'm really, really hungry. It's already 1.30 in the afternoon. We have a masterclass right after this. We're going to basically learn how they make fish under the sun but for now, we're going to start off with this. It's basically a mix of salads. We got some cheese, we got string cheese, boiled cheeses. We have some wine. Nice house wine. Really good. A little strong though. A little fruity. Here we have a salad with carrots and peas. We have another salad that looks like almost like a Greek salad, some tomatoes, cucumbers and then some sesame seeds and this one is, is that like cabbage? It looks like cabbage. Yeah, cabbage. So cabbage and then we have always the lavash. This is the best thing on earth. It is so good. So what I do is I get some cheese and mix it in, right? So I'm going to add this salad, this is the tomato, cucumber. Super healthy. Cheese, veg. Whoa, look at this. So you break it off, right? And here we go. So I'm going to try the Armenian sandwich here. Oh wow. Love that cheese. So different. What's in that? It's pepper. Red pepper. Red pepper? Mmm. Delicious. A little crunchy with the cucumber. Nice and juicy because of the tomato. It's so good. This bread is like from a different planet. It's like the chapati, but longer. It's like a crumbly cheese, right? Mmm. Look at this. So nice. I love cheeses here. This is a country of cheese, meat and wine. Mmm. This is delicious. Strong cheese. Look how it crumbles. So good together? Yeah. So I thought we were only having appetizers, guys. But we're not. We're having way more stuff. We have like 3, 4, 5. So it's 10 dishes. Here we have vegetables who have been cooked with brandy. So with cognac, right? From Arat. From Arat Brandy. Right? Over here we have eggplant with mushrooms and cheese on top. Is that cheese? No, I'm going to serve myself this like right now. I'm probably going to eat this whole plate myself, guys. There's also meat in here. Also meat too? Whoa. So good. And over here we have lavash. But like fried lavash with lentils and chicken. This is like the best dishes ever. And it's so unique because all these dishes I've never seen before. Like anywhere on the planet. Over here, what else we have? That looks hot. Bulgur. Wheat. So wheat. Like bought wheat. Bulgur. So over here we have some veal, wine and vegetables. So I'm basically, I'm skipping the salads. I had to. I mean, the first thing I want to really eat is this right here. I think it's going to be the best thing on the planet. The best eggplant in the world is right here in Armenia. Whoa. It's so good. It's like roasted eggplant. You got some beef in there. It's beef, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's beef. I love the cheese. The cheese melted throughout. I might have to say, this is probably the best eggplant dish ever. And I love the cheese. It's like a white cheese. I think there's also cream on top. I don't know what that is. I don't even know if I want to eat anything else but that plate. Really? That plate is too good. Yeah. Lentils now. Mmm. Very nice. A little dense lentils. I'm going to mix it now with the fried lavash, which actually looks like wonton. Like fried wonton. Mmm. A very similar taste. Mmm. I'm glad you like it. It's basically fried bread. I love this. Everything I'm eating here, wow. And everything is so healthy. I mean, obviously fried bread, maybe not. The rest of it, super healthy. Right here, I'm going to try some super delicious veal. It actually looks like veal stew. Yeah. It literally just fell apart like butter. Like it went down my throat so fast. Whoa. That was so good. And the veg. Mmm. Roasted pepper, got some carrots. Oh, and everything is so soft. And this is the wheat, right? No. And some onion. Onion. Mmm. Nice. That was a little crispy too. The onion. This is my least favorite. This is my favorite. And here we have more eggplant, right? So like, so put on the pan with brandy. Another super delicious thing. Oh my God. That's too much. This is too much. No, I'm serious. Like, get nuts. Get nuts. So I'm going to put some of this garlic like creamy sauce on top of the lentils. These lentils are fantastic. Like they're super good. Oh, the lavash cracked up, fried. Mmm. This is tzatziki. Really nice. It's white yogurt. Matsumi is cold. Yeah. It's like the Armenian version of tzatziki. Yeah. Right? The ketchup. Yeah. It's the Greek ketchup. They put it in everything. Mmm. Oh. So good. I mean, the thing about all this food is that it's super organic. It's like farm to table. Everything came from the farm straight here. The cow was probably killed today, you know, cooked today. I'm serious though. I mean, that's why it's so good. If it was frozen, that's where you lose the taste. But that veal is phenomenal. I mean, it's just falling apart. Oh, so buttery. Okay. Let's go see this master class. Fish, huh? Yeah. I've never seen this before. You said it's really unique. It's very unique and they do it here. So, let's go and check it out. Put a little bit of salt in there and left it for a while. We have walnuts in the bottom as you see and trout fish on the top. A little bit salty. And let's go together. They have a special plate constructed in here and they catch the sunlight. What? This is crazy. With the help of it and we're going to have like sun-cooked trout right now. Sun-cooked trout on these huge like antennas. They look like little salad dishes that they set up. They put the dish on top and just leave it there for how long? Oh, during the very hot period of the year. It can be like August. They are leaving it for 3 minutes only. Only 3 minutes? Yeah. And today, how long? And today, it's going to be about 10-15 minutes. Now, we got to the most interesting part. It's catching the sun. I mean, it is really hot right now. It's easily like 85, almost 90 degrees. It's really, really hot and every time the sun reflects to me, it gets even hotter. So, I can't even imagine what's happening in there. So, basically, it just boils it, you know, 50 minutes in the sun, cooks it with walnuts. So different. Walnuts and trout in this dish on like a little salad dish, right? Little antenna. We just caught the sun. It's like literally the sun just hit it directly in with all the mirrors and it's bright, super bright. I can't even look at it. Yeah. It's like it's too much. It's reflecting into our eyes. It's blinding me, man. It's too much. Oh, my God. I couldn't even see right there. Whoa. You can't even look at it. Our trout eliminated, you know. 700 degrees Celsius. That's the hottest. Oh, my God. It's smoking. Oh. Whoa. Look at that. David, imagine the walnuts we put inside. They are giving the trout smoked flavor. So, it's going to be like a smoky walnut taste throughout, right? Yeah. Like just like melted throughout the whole thing. Whoa. It's like, look at this. I didn't even understand how that happened. It's like the mirrors all hit it correctly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Whoa. And you can hear it now. Scientific solution we have here. Three minutes and it's getting ready in summertime. That's crazy. It's really crazy, you know. It's even crazy for me. I'm local, but it's crazy for me. I mean, I can't imagine it being hotter than this because like right now, it's super dry, super hot. It gets hotter though. So, it's not apricot season right now, but they have a tree and actually have a few apricots. She said if I can actually get up there and get it, I can keep it, I can eat it. One? Should I get all of them? No. The other one is better. Yeah, this one is better. Cool. All right. So, we got apricot here and the way you do it, you eat it the organic way. Just clean it. Mmm. So tasty. Wow. So juicy. So moist. Oh, I love it like this actually. It's not like super, super ripe because if it's super ripe, it would just like fall apart. It's a little hard. Thank you. We're lucky to have apricots in October. Really. Yeah. I love apricots. But they cut this on the top. They fill it up with cognac and then they drink the cognac and then they are eating the apricot. What? So, they open the top like this. Mmm. This one is super ripe. Yeah. Mmm. It's actually better. It's tastier. Wow. Woo. The heat. Oh, my God. Wow. Time to try some delicious trout with walnuts that has been cooked on like a sunny antenna. Crazy. This is going to be epic. All right. Our masterpiece is ready. We didn't do anything for it. Yeah. We just caught the sun. Yeah. Oh, my God. So, you have to slowly bring it up. Oh, my God. This looks great. Thank you. Lots of spines though. Lots of spines. You have to go slowly. Right? Wow. Mmm. It's like a smoky walnut taste in it. Mmm. So different. It's delicious. It really is delicious. I've never had this. I've never really had food with walnut taste. I've had a few things here that taste, you know, obviously because it's cooked with the walnuts. I remember they put no oil. Mmm. No butter in there. It's its own oil. Yeah. It's basically cooked on its own. The fish oil. I'm going to take this whole piece of skin right here. Ooh. It's like literally the walnut has like melted onto it. Crazy. Mmm. It's nice? This is incredible. It really is delicious. Mmm. This is really special. The best part is the skin. The skin and the eyes have the most, like the most good oils, you know? Wow. Wine is coming. What? What is this? This is like a jar of wine. Oh, cheers. Cheers. Mmm. Cheers to Armenia. Armenia. My friend, cheers. This is great. I love the house wine. In many countries, they are skipping the head, you know? For no reason. I don't know. But we really like the cheeks. You should find it somewhere here. Well, I actually like this the most. Yeah. Mmm. And the middle is the best in the head. Mmm. No. That? The eyeball? Wow. Mmm. Here at the culture center, they also have like a bed and breakfast. They have 12 rooms and each room is unique. One of them is like the lock room, like the love lock room, has a huge lock. Beautiful furniture. And all the furniture is basically craftsmanship that has been done here. So, they get the wood, they carve it all out, they do it themselves. And they also have a few different things here. They have like a wine, winery? You have a winery? World Poets Tavern, it is called. A tavern? A tavern, yes. Okay. We keep wine there for aging and there is also poems about wine in different languages. Behind the chairs here, in Russian, Armenian, and English, all about wine. The tables are about wine, they are different. In the feet of the tables, we keep wine for aging. You can see the... I've never seen this before. I've never seen aging wine on a table where you're drinking. Yes. Whoa, this is cool. And this is all wine that you guys produce? Yes. This is all homemade wine, Machanen's homemade wine. We make here each year. Incredible. Keep on aging. This is really, really beautiful. I love it. I love it because it feels like an old school tavern, you know? Yes. I guess it's like an Armenian tavern. And the poems, and the poems are obviously in Armenian. So, not to speak Armenian, you can't read it. And then what are these? What are these right here? They are decorative, some plants. I love it, man. This is awesome. And then you have more wine over here. This is all store wine. This is... Oh, wow. This is for some person. These are different bottles we made in special ovens where we heat clay. You can see this bottle has been like twisted. But that's because it was in an oven, right? Like it got cooked. I mean... Whoa, look at this. This is awesome. This is, for example, from Lithuania. Lithuania. Ilona. I don't know her name. That's a tough one. Wow. This is really, really cool, man. This is awesome. Is there any wine? Can we try some? Of course. Yeah? Of course. What do you have? We always have in our cuisine, national cuisine, also in kitchen, we have for our guests wine, homemade wine. Okay. So, right now I'm inside the Song of the Old Days room. And basically, this is very, very unique, guys. They made this restaurant for grandparents to work. So, they put out, like they said, any grandparents that want to work, they can come here. Like tons of people applied. He said lots of people applied. This is one of the guys who works here now. This is a grandfather. Serve here. And it's unique in our country, just this period of time. I think it's amazing because for them, you know, obviously it's the hardest people to get actual jobs, right? Yes. For grandparents. They need it. For sure. That's awesome. Hey, good for you guys. This is very nice. Thank you. When you come to Armenia, you have to come out here. I mean, this is really an incredible place. Besides the food, you really get a cultural experience. You can also do like clay classes, which I suggest you do if you have a chance. And you can stay here. You know, stay here for a night, really experience it in depth. You know, go do a few different master classes, clay, make some food. What else do they have? They have other art classes too, right? You said a few other art classes? Art classes. Yeah. I think it's awesome. This is super cool. And I mean, if you come here, you can also go see the churches. I mean, that's the cool thing is that you can base yourself out of here for like, I'd say one night, you know, come here in the morning, have a full night here, see the churches, experience this. Great. All right. So we're back in Yerevan and we arrived here right in front of my hotel. There's a park. This is a park dedicated to the 2,800 year anniversary of Yerevan. Right. So by the way, David, you can find here 2,800 water jets symbolizing 2,800 years of Yerevan being an ancient town, one of the ancient towns in the world. And especially this site is a nice spot for early morning walks with a cup of coffee. One of the most entertaining spots of this park are the fountains in here. And during hot summertime, people, you know, doesn't matter what ages they are, kids and older ones, they're gathering in here to have some fresh water to get wet from the hot summer in Yerevan. Yeah. No, guys, it's pretty amazing. So what happens is this is on and then it eventually just turns off and it just falls on top of your face, like, boom, it hits you hard. So I'm just waiting for it to start up again. I'm going to go running. Everybody's running. But as you can see, out of nowhere, it's going to start up again. All right, guys, I'm going to go through it. This is really nice, especially in summer when it's like really, really hot. It's super refreshing. You just dive in there. So, I mean, the crazy thing, though, is like when it starts to fall, it goes pretty fast. You don't even know. It's like bam, bam, bam, bam. One more time. Yeah, guys. So, I mean, that's it. I mean, today was epic. We basically experienced that cultural center to the max. We saw the museum. After that, we had some delicious food. The food was amazing. My favorite thing was the eggplant. It was, like, to die for. Sun-cooked. Trout. Oh, that's how it is. So, yeah, after we ate the food, we went to see the sun-cooked trout. We had, like, a master class. Basically, a master class means a demonstration. So they just showed us how they do it. You know, they put the trout and the walnuts into this, like, little container. They put it onto the sun. It's like a sort of, like, antenna with a lot of mirrors. So it, like, really helps the sun bounce off the mirrors into the trout. Cooked it in 15 minutes. It was super delicious. The only thing is there's a lot of spines in there, so you got to be careful with that. Really good. And then, yeah, really epic experience. You know, if you really want to stay there, you can do that. You can stay there. They have 12 different guest rooms. So I highly recommend staying there at least a night. You know, really experience it, really chill. And then go to the wine room, try some wine on top of wine that's, like, aging. And then after, you can go upstairs and eat in that restaurant, which is basically a restaurant that only hired grandparents. So grandmas and granddads who didn't have jobs, lots of people applied and started working there. And, yeah, I mean, that's a really nice cause. And, yeah, guys, I hope you love this video. If you did, please give me a thumbs up. Leave me a comment below. Subscribe to my channel for more awesome travel content. I'll see you in the next travel food adventure in Armenia. Peace.