Why I think this ghost kitchen is poised to be the next best LA restaurant

I've seen the future of Los Angeles dining, and it can be found inside a ghost kitchen in a nondescript area of Glendale, just off San Fernando Road.

III Mas Bakery & Deli, run by husband and wife duo Arthur Grigoryan and Takouhi Petrosyan, offers only nine items: various baked goods and a couple of sandwiches with an Armenian-meets-American twist.

But that's like describing "Giant Steps" by John Coltrane as a simple little ditty you can hum. This food is so good that it's downright mind-blowing, and the sandwiches — particularly the Basturma brisket — are some of the best I've had in L.A.

I was enraptured by all the details, from ingredients to historical influences to its ability to tie everything together coherently. It's a specific brand of soulful cooking, telling an essential story of Los Angeles through the lens of one of its most significant immigrant communities.

Grigoryan previously worked at Nancy Silverton's Osteria Mozza restaurant before leaving in 2018. Grigoryan started III Mas (pronounced yiro-mas) to create recipes that combined Texas barbeque with Middle Eastern flavors. However, in 2020, when the armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan occurred, they realized they wanted to preserve the traditional cooking methods of their ancestral homeland, while breathing a new sense of life into it as two Armenian Americans who grew up in SoCal.

Grigoryan and Petrosyan created a new concept based on traditional Jewish and Italian American deli recipes but with an Armenian twist. The concept focuses on bread baking and sandwiches.

"If you look at the Middle East, every street corner of every neighborhood has a bakery, and that's essentially the heart of the community," Grigoryan said.

III Mas refers to the 3rd district in the capital of Yerevan in Armenia, where Grigoryan's father is originally from and worked in the meat business. After a successful run with their pop-up, including at Smorgasburg LA, they decided to venture out and move to a ghost kitchen space earlier this year.

Sandwiches from the heart

Their sandwiches are the biggest sellers. There's the basturma brisket sandwich ($16), my favorite, modeled after classic pastrami, but given a cultural spin by the addition of basturma, a salt-cured meat popular in Armenian cuisine.

Thick cuts of seasoned brisket and a slice of melted Swiss cheese are topped with a pile of their house-made pickles and slathered with their chaman spread, their take on a Russian dressing. It features the same spice rub mix used to season the basturma, a mixture of fenugreek, paprika, cumin, and cayenne, with Japanese kewpie mayonnaise and Worcestershire sauce.

Both brisket and basturma are related, believed to come from the Turkish pastruma (or pastirma), which dates back to the 5th century A.D. Its name means "to press" in Turkish, referring to how the meat is prepared.

The other sandwich option is the Morta-De-Lav-Eli ($16), described as "Middle Eastern Italian fusion," made with mortadella with pistachio, labneh, crushed pistachios, shaved lettuce and oregano vinaigrette. It's undoubtedly a partial homage to Grigoryan's time working with Silverton but also a love letter to Italian deli culture. Growing up in Glendale, Grigoryan frequented Mario's Deli , which has been there for 60 years. Part of the name, "de lav Eli," translates in Armenian to "Come on, bro."

Each sandwich is made with aish baladi, an Egyptian flatbread similar to pita, based on a recipe from Grigoryan's Armenian grandmother, who grew up in Egypt.

In Arabic, the name Aish baladi translates to the bread of life. "Because bread is essential, it's seen as an element of life. Even when times get hard, whether war or famine, it's that mixture of flour and water that keeps people alive and nourished," Grigoryan said.

Also on their menu is their msalosh, also known as lahmajoun , sometimes described as Armenian pizza. The 12-inch circular flatbread is topped with fresh ground and seasoned beef made in-house, which features mixed vegetables and spices, and then blanketed over a well-baked crust. The msalosh is commonly found in Armenian cuisine, offered by plenty of bakeries in Glendale and surrounding areas. But Grigoryan has taken it to the next level, with a sturdy crust similar to an actual pizza crust and fresh-tasting ingredients that elevate the dish.

Like many recipes prepared at III Mas, he has a deep personal connection with the msalosh. His father's side of the family is from the city where they originated, formally known as Aintab, which was initially part of Armenia and is now known as Gaziantep in Turkey.

"We wanted to bring that historical element into it, especially considering that lahmajoun has been in our family for generations," Grigoryan said.

Finding soul in a ghost kitchen

While the dream has always been to open a restaurant, the harsh economic reality of high rents, not to mention the record number of businesses that have shuttered in recent years, made the ghost kitchen model seem the most viable at this point.

A ghost kitchen is usually found in large industrial buildings containing many small kitchen spaces where food is prepared and ordered online for delivery or pick-up.

Grigoryan and Petrosyan spend most days in the small 200-square-foot kitchen, churning out baked goods and sandwiches for pick up and delivery.

While the ghost kitchen allows a certain sense of freedom when preparing the dishes, Grigoryan admits that he misses the customer interaction.

"People come, park, they give us a call, we run the food to them, and that's pretty much it. There's something to be said for the whole customer experience of dropping the food off at the table and giving a chance to explain the food," he said.

Despite those drawbacks, they realize it's the right step for them right now.