Real Armenian Kitchen

Top Five Things About Armenia

• Long days: at 10pm it's still bright, 27 degrees, and people are swimming and lounging around on sunbeds beside the pool (In Kampala it gets dark at 7pm all year round)
• No mosquitoes!!! In Uganda, lounging around a pool after 6pm would involve so many mozzie bites that it wouldn't make life worth living
• Strong showers. Showers in Africa dribble, for obvious reasons
• Fast internet. My god, its life changing. In Kampala I usually read newspaper articles or go off and watch the kettle boil while waiting for emails to open or attachments to download...
• Coffee. Coffee, and wonderful bread. And mezze. And dolma. Fruit. Salad. Fresh cherries. Cheese. Copious amounts of vegetables, in all the colours of the rainbow. And did I mention the coffee?

We had lunch Sunday, our only free day, at "Real Armenian Kitchen", a restaurant recommended to us near the hotel. Because it was Sunday and we're in the government/business district it was very quiet so we were the only people there besides some people who knew the owners - everyone was sitting around watching the football on a flat screen tv. We had an overwhelmingly warm welcome and service from them, but the problem is we have no idea why. There were three possibilities:

• Armenians are genuinely lovely, warm people who treat guests with great generosity
• The restaurant owners were good businessmen who were upselling hard and wanted us to come back and bring more business
• They don't see many Africans around here (we have two - Margaret, who is Ugandan, and Nabou, who is from Senegal)

Which do you think is more likely?!

It was quite endearing, they were so excited to see us. They kept bringing us food. As we tried to decipher the menu and decide what to order, they just started bringing food to the table ("Appetizer! Is appetizer!") and they kept on going. Plate after plate, after plate. ("Is ok, is appetizer!").

First an overflowing basket of four types of that wonderful bread (flat, white, black and plaited). A plate of three different types of cheese (sheep, goat and a yellow one, cow I guess). A plate piled high with cucumber, oddly phallic hot green peppers and fat, rich, ripe tomato - made me think straight away of pomidori, almost exactly the same as the great Polish summer tomatoes, which make you realise that we've forgotten what real tomatoes taste like in Ireland. A plate of two types of dried/cured beef ("Is Armenian. Is good!"). A bowl of cold stewed aubergine, tomato and sweet peppers, sort of a pepperonata or ratatouille ("Is homemade!"). A plate of "greens", but what a lovely plate - radishes, spring onions, bunches of parsley and other herbs, and a mix of dark and green leaves.

We didn't order any of this: when the first plates began to arrive ("Is appetizer!") we thought, ok, that looks nice - no harm to have something to pick on, to start with. But as the table started to fill up and we began to run out of room to fit all the bowls and dishes, we had to start turning them away. Another plate of cured meat for example. Pyramids of asparagus. And they were very upset that we refused soup ("Chicken soup - is very good! No? Asparagus soup? Bean soup? No? No? Yoghurt soup then").

On top of all this - and it would have more been more than enough - we had main courses coming. I had beautiful dolma - meat and rice mixed with herbs, onion and garlic and wrapped up in vine leaves, with a yoghut and garlic sauce. Yum yum yum. Orsi had the dolma filling stuffed into vegetables like courgette and cabbage rather than vine leaves. Nabou had veal stew with flat bread. Margaret had the brilliantly-named "domestic chicken". Domestic chicken turned out to be tiny, not much bigger than a pigeon, spatch-cocked and laid out on the plate with its little legs thrown up in surrender. She said it was tasty but labour-intensive in terms of deconstruction.

Then the presents began. A jug of strawberry wine, which was ludicrously delicious, like a concoction from a fairy tale or a children's movie where they drink something utterly scrumptious that couldn't seem to possibly exist in real life. Also a jug of dark red juice, half full of cherries soaked and bloated which were put out in a bowl for us when the jug of juice was drained. I think it was cherry juice but I'm not sure if it was a mix - it was slightly dry and tart like cranberry ("This from us, this present - you try!").

Halfway through our main courses he arrived with another plate of cured meat. No, no, we couldn't possibly - we already had more than enough food. "No, you try," he insisted, putting one piece on each of our plates. "Is from chef. Is Armenian! Is very good. You try." As if it was of such good quality that we really had to try it for our own good, he knew better than we did that we needed to taste it, it'd be good for us. He seemed terribly relieved when we all brightened and smiled and agreed it was very nice.

Dessert? Absolutely not - we couldn't possibly. Full stomach gestures all round the table, comical and absurd. No! That wouldn't do. He dashed enthusiastically over to a table in the centre of the room where a few dishes of cakes were covered with cling film. "No no, you try, you try!"

No, really, we were full (we also had no idea at this point how much anything cost or whether they were just ripping us off).

"Is present!" he cheered, full of excitement and joy, like a child giving a gift he has made himself. Plates were whipped away, new ones appeared from cupboards, and a dish of pastries was placed in front of us. We didn't have a chance to pick up our spoons before a second guy was bringing over plates of stiff yoghurt and a bowl of honey. ("Is Armenian. Is natural. Is homemade!"). The yoghurt was really like ricotta, stiff as ice cream so that a spoonful sat up by itself, pert on the plate. I can't bear dairy but even I thought it was lovely; with the honey in fact it was almost immaculately beautiful. There was something ancient and ancestral about it. Just a spoonful made you think of the farmers and the hills and the countryside, and of the timelessness of so simple and perfect a recipe must be unchanging, of all the generations and the peoples over all the hundreds of years who must have eaten food just exactly like this.

And in fairness to them, everything was a present. They didn't charge us for drinks or desert or the things they had pressed upon us as gifts. And after fierce hand shaking and wild gesturing and profuse, broken English, we stumbled outside laughing and tottered back to the hotel to fall into a happy food coma.