Sam’s Armenian Bakery ~ Glendale

Sam's Armenian Bakery ~ 410 Raleigh St. Glendale, CA 91205 ~818 247-6281

Mmm, mmmm. It's breakfast time at Sam's Armenian Bakery. If coffee and donuts just isn't cutting your morning fog, try any number of fried sweet breads and meat filled pastries fresh from Sam's kitchen. Ask, and the baker will tell you what's inside each of these treats waiting to meet you. I chose one filled with potato. The baker responded to my wide eyed curiosity by offering me Armenian pizza. "What's that?" "It's good- you'll like it." Hey, that's an offer I can't refuse!

The pizzas were surely fresh from the oven, because the baker disappeared into the kitchen and shortly reappeared with an offering my eyes could not refuse. I looked pleased and she deftly folded the thin crust pizza in half. She rang everything up for a bargain price of $1.65.

Armenian pizza, also know as Lahmajoon, is a thin crust pizza spread with ground lamb, parsley, garlic, and assorted herbs and spices. Everybody knows that pizzas all over the world are strangely different and the same. Sam's pizzas are a delicious and light snack. Like a good taco, I could have eaten one after the other. But I was on the run, like the many cab drivers I saw come and go from the 20min. parking spaces outside the bakery. We'll be back to sample more sugary sweet dough treats; they bring back childhood memories of sopapillas with honey butter.