The people who know what they’re doing put down their forks and knives.
Savvy diners at Yan’s Restaurant on Murray Street grab a massive, pleated dumpling by what you might call its doughy tail. They flip them upside down, take small nibbles and then nimbly suck out the broth. Only then do they take larger bites of the dumplings and their beefy fillings.
Khinkali are Georgian dumplings filled with beef and pork and broth at Yan’s Restaurant on Murray Street.
That’s how these dumplings are eaten back home in Georgia — the Caucasus region country, not the southern U.S. state. There, the dumplings are known as khinkali, and to eat them with cutlery, squandering their juices, is frowned upon. It’s simply not done.
That’s one of numerous pleasant discoveries that I recently made at Yan’s, which opened in December. It’s Ottawa’s first restaurant to serve not only khinkali ($5 or $5.50, depending on the filling) but also a menu focused on the food of Georgia and Armenia, two neighbouring countries to the east of Turkey.
These Khinkali (Georgian dumplings) are stained black with squid ink and stuffed with cheese and dill at Yan’s Restaurant.
Yan’s owners and chefs, the Armenian couple Armen Dalibaldyan and his wife Gohar Ghumashyan, immigrated to Toronto in 2019, where they worked in major financial institutions. They and their children eventually moved to Ottawa because homes here are more affordable. Then they changed careers, deciding to open a restaurant, in part because Armenian and Georgian food were not available in Ottawa before Yan’s opened.
Co-owner and chef Goha Ghumashyan at her restaurant Yan’s Restaurant, which serves Armenian and Georgian food.
“This is a niche that is actually empty,” says Dalibaldyan.
Among Yan’s customers are not only expat Armenians and Georgians who are well-versed in eating khinkali but also emigres from other post-Soviet states, including recently arrived Ukrainians, he says.
Initially, the couple’s dream was to swap 9-to-5 work for running a small cafe. But then they came across their Murray Street location, long vacated by the pizza place Fiazza Fresh Fired.
Yan’s Restaurant is on Murray Street in the ByWard Market.
“We saw the big pizza oven… We can make anything in it,” says Dalibaldyan. The oven’s potential prompted the couple to think bigger, and they went ahead with opening Yan’s, a much-renovated space that seats 70 and has a 36-seat patio to come.
The dining room of Yan’s Restaurant on Murray Street in Ottawa.
The restaurant’s name reflects the fact that Armenian surnames end in “yan.” While Dalibaldyan and his wife are Armenian, they know how to make Georgian food and their menu is a 50-50 split between the two cuisines.
From the former pizza oven emerges two signature Georgian breads. Khachapoori lazoori ($25) is a round, fluffy bread filled with melted cheese. The more interesting and indulgent pick is Khachapoori ajarooli ($30), a boat-shaped bread, laden with salty-sour sulguni cheese, butter and egg yolk, all of which is tossed table-side.
At Yan’s Restaurant on Murray Street, Khachapuri is a boat-shaped bread with a cheese and egg filling.
At Yan’s Restaurant on Murray Street, Khachapuri, a boat-shaped bread, has its filling of cheese and egg tossed table-side.
I’ve also started dinner more than satisfactorily at Yan’s with tolma ($24), Armenia’s version of grape leaves stuffed with minced meat, rice and herbs, as well as satsivi ($16), a Georgian dish of chicken in a sauce of ground walnuts, garlic and spices that was served cold. More substantial was the garden platter ($48) that whetted the appetites of four of us with an array of dips, grilled mushrooms, carrot salad, marinated zucchini, cabbage and cauliflower.
Tolma are grape leaves stuffed with rice and beef at Yan’s Restaurant on Murray Street.
Satsivi (a dip of walnuts, garlic and lemon with chicken) at Yan’s Restaurant in the ByWard Market.
Garden platter at Yan’s Restaurant in the ByWard Market.
The Caucasus mountains define the geography of Dalibaldyan’s home region, and therefore, Armenian and Georgian cuisine is less about agricultural products and more about meat, he says.
Platters of oven-grilled meats served with bulgur, rice, grilled vegetables and bread take up several pages of Yan’s menu. Two lamb chops ($29) were grilled impeccably, and this platter introduced a compelling condiment called tkhemali ($29) made with sour plums and nicknamed “Georgian ketchup.”
Lamb chops at Yan’s Restaurant in the ByWard Market. In the centre is a bowl of tkhemali, a Georgian sour plum-based dip.
Although Ottawa’s dining scene teems with kebabs, Yan’s makes one that’s unique and easy to recommend. Here, chicken and pork kebabs ($19, or $26 with an additional skewer) are made with both meats and, as a result, are as juicy as they are tasty.
Chicken and pork kebabs at Yan’s Restaurant in the ByWard Market.
Although other kinds of meat platters were available, featuring salmon, chicken thighs or pork, I’ve been more intrigued by Yan’s assortment of claypot stews.
Closer to a soup, and very appealing was the Georgian beef dish kharcho ($16), thanks to its heat and inclusion of tkhemali, the sour plum condiment. More mild was shkmeruli ($18), a Georgian dish of chicken thighs baked in garlic cream sauce. We would have liked this dish a bit more if some searing of the chicken skin had made it less flaccid.
Kharcho beef soup at Yan’s Restaurant in the ByWard Market.
Shkmeruli (chicken thighs baked in a garlic cream sauce) at Yan’s Restaurant in the ByWard Market.
More substantial were khashlama ($28), an Armenian lamb and vegetable stew, and chakhokhibli ($38), a tomato-y Georgian stew starring rabbit.
Khashlama lamb stew at Yan’s Restaurant in the ByWard Market.
Chakhokhibli at Yan’s Restaurant in the ByWard Market.
Dalibaldyan says that while he and his wife were not trained as chefs, they know their traditional recipes well and insist on authenticity.
To that end, they source spices from Georgia and Armenia, as well as Armenian herbs and Armenian teas.
For oenophiles, Yan’s may be of special interest because it offers Georgian and Armenian wines. Georgia is in fact the birthplace of wine as long as 8,000 years ago, when neolithic vintners fermented South Caucasus grapes in large clay vessels buried underground. The bottle of Georgian wine that we shared certainly impressed and made us think we should get better acquainted with wines from this part of the world.
Armenian wine is available at Yan’s Restaurant on Murray Street in the ByWard Market.
The dessert offerings at Yan’s are limited to pakhlava, Armenia’s version of baklava, and a less interesting meringue dessert.
Pakhlava at Yan’s Restaurant in the ByWard Market.
Service here has been polished and hospitable, even if the restaurant is run by novices to the restaurant business. It helps that Georgian expat Dima Korotkov is a seasoned server and bartender with experience in Ukraine, the Netherlands and Canada.
The bar at Yan’s Restaurant is on Murray Street in Ottawa, helmed by Dima Korotkov.
I could end cheekily and say that Yan’s is Ottawa’s best Armenian/Georgian restaurant, when of course it has no competition. The better point to make is that Yan’s makes Ottawa’s dining scene more diverse, which can only be a good thing. Even more meaningfully, this is a restaurant that brings something new to the ByWard Market and to Ottawa, and it has high standards, ambition and pride going for it.
Yan’s Restaurant
86 Murray St., instagram.com/yansrestaurant
Khashlama lamb stew at Yan’s Restaurant in the ByWard Market.
Open: Tuesday to Friday 5 to 11 p.m., Saturday, Sunday noon to 11 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: platters and stews from $16 to $38
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