Sunday New York Times had a “Food and Drink” issue. Some good stuff from Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman. And a few nasty/dopey items. Christopher Buckley did a short essay: “What’s The Golden Rule of a Business Lunch?” He used this as a springboard to dis Ed Berberian’s Balkan Armenian Restaurant, an ethnic gem that shut its doors some years ago. Buckley seems to have inherited all of his late father’s (the conservative/reactionary William F.) snarkiness and has coupled it with an uneducated palate (probably honed at a white bread prep school). 
The Balkan Armenian (on E.27th near Lexington) was the type of small, affordable. family restaurant that made Manhattan so delightful for residents and tourists. It had a wonderful pastry appetizer (cheese borek), stuffed vine leaves, Armenian chopped eggplant, the best lamb (not mutton, as Buckley stated) kebabs, rice pilaf. All tasty treats. 
And, the desserts? Heaven. An HG favorite was Ekmek Kadayiff with Kaymak. This was a sweet, but not too, pastry topped with the Armenian version of English clotted cream. HG tastes it in his dreams. HG took BSK there on their second date (March 1963) and BSK sure knew she wasn’t in Ohio anymore.
The other goof by the Times was perpetrated by the usually perceptive movie critic, A.O.Scott. He called “Ratatouille” the best food movie ever made. Could he have been kidding? While Ratatouille was sly and knowingly funny about French cuisine and the shadowy world of restaurant kitchens — it is in no way the best. Anyone who loves film and food knows the best “food” movie ever made is the Japanese-language “Tampopo.” Mixing humor, eroticism and a satirical riff on “Shane” and other Hollywood westerns, Tampopo will have you lusting for Ramen, dreaming about oyster diving girls and speculating on the reality of fresh, Japanese wild boar sausages. It is a paean to the joys of eating, to the joys of movies and to the joy of life.
Give yourself a treat. Rent the movie today.
Like Christopher Buckley, and at about the same time, I was employed as a tadpole editor at a significantly lesser magazine than his (mine was not national, it was international, if you discounted the fact that we didn’t circulate in the US). And being on the corner of 27th and Fourth (not yet Park Avenue South), the Balkan Armenian was convenient and clearly a local treasure. The lamb (mutton, indeed!) kebobs, the midia dolma, the baklava … all were first class.
In 1959, during Spring vacation from her teaching job, my wife drove in from Queens to lunch with me there. She remembers the event largely for the fact that it was her first experience driving what she still considered during these early days of marriage as “my” car through the Holland Tunnel.
I remember the as usual lovely lunch at the Balkan Armenian and our delight when I was paying the check and Mr. Berberian smiled at my wife, pointed to a glass bowl of nicely decorated Easter eggs and asked her to take one. She did, turned it over in her hand to look at the designs and on the bottom found a tiny hand-painted message, “Congratulations, you have won a free lunch.”
And it wasn’t the next lunch. It was the one we had just finished.
Terrific place. We returned as often as possible.
Yes, Berberian was a lovely guy and his restaurant was a treasure. See my post about the faux pas I was guilty of at that Armenian restaurant. Thanks,Walt,for your comments.