ARMENIAN STREET FOOD You ve Never Seen This Before Russian Breakfast Soviet Haircut

Yeah it smells like a shoe. Like a shoe that I just went running for like a mile in. Welcome to Chopstick Travel. I'm Luke Martin and this is episode three from Armenia. So I've woken up bright and early and come to the Molokan village. So the Molokans are a community of Russians that are living here in Armenia. I'm going to be explaining more about that later but afterwards we'll be visiting the Gyumri morning market to sample the local blue cheese. And then after that we'll be going to make the famous Armenian flatbread known as lavash made in the traditional way. We have a lot more planned for today so it's going to be a great episode. Make sure you stay tuned until the end. Let's go eat some Armenian food. This is Natasha here. She is a local Molokan and she's just welcomed us with some tea and this is really interesting. This is called a samovar. It's 136 years old. It is using coal to heat the hot water. So she's got black tea and then you see she just kind of dilutes it with some hot water and I think this is made of copper. Is that right? Copper. Yeah and really cool. 136 years old. So the reason that the Molokans are living here in Armenia goes back quite a ways. It was during the 18th-19th century that they were banished by the Russian empire because their religion was slightly different. They were a religious minority. It's slightly different than the orthodox church. So they were banished to other parts of the empire including Georgia and Armenia and some interesting facts. They can only marry within the other Molokans. So whether that's a Molokan in Georgia or in Armenia it doesn't matter but they have to be Molokan and also they're still speaking Russian to this day. They've also given us some food so we're gonna try this out. I'm not sure what we've got here so let's see. This one here is called it's a deep fried dough that has been stuffed. This one's been stuffed with the cabbage and then we've got another one back here stuffed with potato and then we've got several types of jams. This is a sea buckthorn jam. All homemade I'm guessing and then a raspberry jam in the middle and then this one is with pumpkin, peach and apricot and the Molokans are famous for their dairy production. So we've got some cheese here, local cheese and then some flatbread kind of pancakes to eat with the jam. Okay let's try this one. This one's stuffed with cabbage. It's still warm. It's like carrots and cabbage julienned on the inside and fluffy bread. Natasha makes this cheese herself. Let's try it. It's just a light cheese. Very simple flavor. She was just joking saying that everything on the table she makes herself except for the sugar and these candies right here. So everything homemade. So this is the pirojok with potatoes instead of the cabbage. Let's try. It's like a fluffy donut on the outside and this one's got creamy potatoes on the inside with a little bit of dill too. Okay let's try the homemade jams next. Different types of jams like I was explaining all made by Natasha herself but this one really sounds interesting. Pumpkin, peach and apricot. Wow what a combination. The pumpkin with the apricot and the peach is like perfect mixture of a little bit sweet and a little bit sour and then with this bread it's really good. That's awesome. I want some of that jam to take home with me. Just finished off with our breakfast with Miss Natasha and her husband. Very welcoming, very hospitable and the food was great and I love to hear and learn about the Molokan history and culture and what's even more incredible is that they're keeping their culture alive here in Armenia. Some of their kids are actually working now in Moscow so they do visit Russia. Nowadays they're of course able to go back to Russia. Just taking a little stroll around their garden, their property here. Beautiful. I love that they're totally self-sufficient. They've got their own chickens, they've got their own cow, I think I saw ducks. Of course they're growing their own vegetables, they're making their own cheese, they're making their own jam and the food didn't really look like much but I'm telling you that jam was the best jam I've ever had in my entire life. It's a beautiful autumn morning here in Armenia. The leaves are changing color, the clouds are covering the mountains. It's beautiful. Alright, that was awesome. Next we're heading to the city of Gyumri to visit the local central market of Gyumri. Let's go. So this is Gyumri's central market. Gyumri is much less visited, I guess you could say, than Yerevan, the capital and because of that this market is very authentic compared to the market which we also visited in Yerevan which is nice but this is like really authentic, kind of semi-outdoor market. I haven't seen a single tourist here and there's just so much fresh fruits and veg and Gyumri is very famous for their cheese and particularly blue cheese which we're going to try. I can't say it looks appetizing if I'm being totally honest with you but let's try it out anyway. So there are plenty of little stalls selling the cheese here at the Gyumri market and we just stopped at this one right here and you can see she's got a bag of the blue cheese here and that is seriously blue, seriously moldy looking. I mean, wow, I'm not a huge fan of blue cheese and this one's probably the most blue blue cheese I'll ever try. So let's try it. Yeah, it smells like a shoe, like a shoe that I just went running for like a mile in. Yeah, it's a slow, slow release of flavor. The more you chew it, the stronger it gets. It's like kind of funky but actually not as much as I was expecting. It tastes just like a normal cheese but you definitely get that kind of funk at the back of your nose. Yeah, you can smell it. That's going be there for a while. It's a really really blue. Not a fan. No, sorry. It tastes like salty fish, like really. I thought I tasted some kind of seafood flavor going on there which is yeah a little bit concerning but yeah. It's like fishy smell when it tastes fishy too. I don't know if cheese is supposed to smell like fish but it does. It is, it does. Another thing I'm seeing a lot of at the market here are these little orange berries. They're called sea buckthorns. Let's try one out. Super sour but honestly after that cheese, that is perfect. It's good. I'll take one more. Really good. Sour but helps eliminate the stink in my mouth. She also just gave me a fig which is really popular at the market here. We're drawing a little bit of a crowd. Got some people hanging it with me here. Sweet. Oh, that's really really good. Oh my gosh. That's an amazing fig. That might be the best fig I've ever tasted. Very sweet, juicy, yum and soft. Really cool market and next we're going to do something a little bit different than my regular content. I've heard that there is a Soviet era barber shop that hasn't changed whatsoever since the Soviet times and apparently it's like the best place to get a haircut in town and well my hair is getting pretty long so I figured why not. We're gonna go check out this barber shop and I guess I'm gonna get a haircut. So I'm getting my haircut now and the stuff that they're, the tools that they're using like the comb and the scissor and everything is from the Soviet Union. The shop is super super cool. So far so good. I needed one so it's worth it. All right how do you make me look? I think I'm looking pretty good and he's been cutting hair since the Soviet era so not only the shop Soviet but even the barber. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. He asked me at the end do you want a little bit of linen and I said why not so he gave me the linen. Not my typical cut I'd say but what an experience. So we've come now to Lake Savan and in particular the Savanovank Monastery. So many monasteries here in Armenia and they're all just incredibly beautiful. This is the largest lake in Armenia. It's the second largest high altitude lake in the world. You can feel the altitude here. It's about 1900 a little bit more meters and you have to climb up some stairs to get up here so you can definitely feel the altitude. Beautiful monastery with an incredible view over the lake. This lake is famous for the Lake Savan trout which we tried in the last episode. It's beautiful. It's the landscape here is like breathtaking and especially when you see the, I like like ancient building. It's really beautiful and once you learned how the like what history behind it you it's like wow it's amazing. So we're stopped here because we spotted this woman who's selling this beautiful gata. She's very friendly. She just gave me a piece. This is a very traditional kind. We tried another kind of gata. This one's just with sugar and butter on the inside. Let's try it. Delicious. The sugar it's kind of crunchy on the inside and it actually says Gagarad which is the name of the area that we're at right now and the name of the monastery that's right up here. I just couldn't pass up without stopping. She's got this beautiful gata here. Very friendly. Thank you so much. Merci. So all these ladies are set up selling the same thing. They've got the sujuk and some dried fruit and then also the gata. Gata is like the iconic quintessential Armenian dessert and they're all making it at home and they make this in a tonir. Same as the lavash. So we're just seeing how traditional lavash bread is made. The most famous bread in all of Armenia. Look at that. That's the final product but this is such an interesting process to see. First this woman's got a rolling pin. She's rolling out the dough very very thin but then they kind of work it with their hands and get it even thinner and then she's got this huge pillow right here and this is called tonir. It's a tandoor oven in the ground. It's a wood fire. There's charcoal at the bottom. A little bit of water to kind of help it stick to the edge and then she picks up this entire pillow and plops it onto the side of the tonir. Look at this. That is seriously cool and as soon as it hits the side of that oven it starts bubbling up. It only takes about one minute to get the bread super crispy. These women are just masters at this. Very very cool. You got a little hole in the ground here. Do I sit down? Yeah okay and then okay just be careful please. Just a little bit yeah. All right here goes nothing. I gotta be fast because I'm gonna burn my hand. Oh this is okay. I think I didn't go low enough. Good? She says good. I think I could have went even lower but wow it is hot. It like burned the hairs on my hand. Can I try? Sure. Okay let me go a little deeper. I didn't go deep enough. It's it looks okay right? Okay all right let's try one more time. Try one more time. Like that is four four feet deep I'd say at least. It's smoking hot. There's a little handle on the back of this pillow here. All right let's try this again. Okay? All right there's mine right there. Definitely doesn't look as beautiful as the women's that's for sure but I think I did all right for my my first try. It is seriously hot like my hand is burnt just from going in there. Okay this is the final result. My hand's a little burnt but that was a lot of fun. Really interesting to see the women working away. They're so good at doing that and I'm gonna make a traditional Armenian lavash roll. So grab some of the kind of less crispy part from the middle and then we've got a whole platter of all these different cheese kind of village cheese. Try to kind of spread that around. Crumble that in there and then all these veggies back here too. Maybe I'll go for cucumber. A little bit of dill. The dill here in Armenia is so good. Roll that up. Oh the fresh lavash is so good. You can taste the tonyar. I feel like it's like a little smoky. Really crispy on the edges and then kind of chewy soft. You get that dill in there. The dill here is amazing. So this right here is probably the most famous site in all of Armenia. This is the Temple of Garni. It's a pagan temple. It's the only remaining pagan temple not only in Armenia but in all of the post-Soviet Union nations and it's a pagan temple. Before Christianity was legalized in Armenia as a state religion, the major religion, paganism, so they had multiple gods. This temple in particular was devoted to the god of the sun. There are 24 pillars around it. One for every hour of the day so an entire rotation around the sun and it's in the Greco-Roman style. Not only an incredible temple here but you've got an incredible view over this crazy landscape of Armenia. This massive gorge with a river flowing through it and there's also an old Roman bathhouse they call it. So there is a bathhouse where you can see where they used to relax and there's also an incredible mosaic on the floor with depictions of mythological creatures and old Greek writing. This was built in the 70s. So I'm not talking about the 1970s. I'm not talking about 1870s. I'm talking about the 70s with no other numbers. So first century AD. This is a really incredible sight you have to come see. I'm gonna go inside and take a look inside. Let's go. So there's not actually anything inside. There are very very few people practicing paganism in Armenia nowadays. It's like something like only 200 people but one thing you'll notice is that the steps are really really huge. That's how you know it's a pagan temple because they actually used to coming up into the temple and this temple was destroyed during an earthquake but then it was rebuilt during the Soviet Union. This is just a really really cool place. You've got to come here and take some pictures. Take in the history like I've recommended before. Get a tour guide because there's a lot to learn. Back at the hotel now. Another great day here in Armenia and that wraps up our trip here to Armenia. I want to say a huge thank you to our tour guide Arpi. She was absolutely incredible. A wealth of knowledge. It taught us so much about Armenia, the culture, the history. I also want to say a huge thank you to the Armenian tourism board for inviting us here. We would have came even if we were not invited because this is like a bucket list destination that I've been waiting to come to for a long time. Really incredible cuisine. Just such an incredible country with so much to see from the monasteries to the beautiful nature to the incredible rich history here. There's just so much here in Armenia. I hope you guys enjoyed the series as much as we did making it. So if you haven't already, subscribe and we'll see you guys on the next episode. Bye.