Three-story Marriott hotel to be built on ocean-view location

By Phil Dieh

CARLSBAD — After 27 years serving customers in coastal Carlsbad, The Armenian Cafe is closing its doors to make way for a new hotel that will be built on the seaside property.

“I’m gonna cry,” restaurant owner Eddy Shakarjian said this week. “We had a small kitchen fire in 1994, and that made me cry. I can’t imagine what happens when I see the bulldozers bulldoze this building.”

Shakarjian knows he’s been fortunate to occupy a prime piece of coastal real estate for so long. His big outdoor deck overlooks Carlsbad Boulevard, which is officially Highway 101, with views of the ocean and other popular spots such as Harbor Fish Cafe and the Offshore Surf Shop.

His original lease stated that the property owner might build a hotel on the site and, if that were to happen, the restaurant would have to go.

“I thought I’d be here five or 10 years and then out,” Shakarjian said. Instead, the place enjoyed a nearly three-decade run.

The end was signaled in 2007, when the Carlsbad City Council approved plans for a 104-room, three-story Marriott hotel on the land, which now holds the Armenian Cafe, the 28-room Surf Motel built in 1968 and a single-family home. The project is finally about to proceed.

Shakarjian said he’s looking for a new location and is considering somewhere in Vista, near his home. He’s also keeping in touch with his landlord about opening within the new Marriott, but so far the plan there includes no restaurant.

“I’m going to miss this place,” he said Tuesday, looking around the Carlsbad eatery.

Shakarjian isn’t exactly a stranger to starting over. Half Armenian and half Lebanese, he and his family left Beirut when he was 21 because of the war there.

“A shell put a hole in my dad’s bedroom,” he recalled. “We left everything behind.”

The family’s first stop was New Jersey, but a relative soon lured the family west to the warm Carlsbad climate.

Shakarjian’s first local culinary venture was a deli he opened in 1987 in what was then the Carlsbad Liquor store on Elm Street, now Carlsbad Village Drive, in the building that is now Fish House Vera Cruz. He called it Foods “R” Us, he said, probably because he had a young daughter and had been shopping at Toys “R” Us.

A year later he moved to the present location, which had been a shaved ice shop for 20 years. There was no outdoor deck, only a parking lot there, but he soon added the deck, which wraps around two sides of the building.

“It became my bread and butter,” he said. “Nobody sits inside.”

Like most successful restaurant owners, Shakarjian credits a faithful following of regular customers. Some have been coming back since his days in the deli, he said.

“Probably 70 percent of my customers are regulars,” he said.

He’s proud of his cuisine, which he said is a western Armenian style, close to Greek with a lot of Middle Eastern influences. He likes to visit other restaurants and compare their food to his own.

“We’re known for our lamb,” Shakarjian said, adding that his rack of lamb is made with an expensive cut of meat and is a “loss leader” for the restaurant. “We take care of it. We marinate our meats for 48 hours.”

Chicken, beef and vegetarian shish kebabs are popular with his customers, along with the Persian favorites falafel, baba ghanoush and sarma.

On weekends the cafe offers entertainment, with a belly dancer performing three times nightly. A live band performed for many summers, and John Bilezikjian, a master of the 11-string Persian oud, which looks much like a large mandolin, played there often for many years.

A family atmosphere dominates the cafe, where the staff includes three of Shakarjian’s four children. His daughter Leah, 30, is the manager, and sons Matthew, 24, and Andrew, 18, also work there. A younger son, Luke, is 15.

Customers have been taking the closure hard, said Niki Birmingham, a waitress at the cafe for four years.

“This family is like my family,” she said. “The regulars have been coming here since they opened. I served a couple yesterday who drove two hours to get here.

“Some people cry when they get the news,” Birmingham said. “It’s really sad. People are taking it like a traumatic situation.”

The sadness has been shared on the cafe’s Facebook page.

“Our favorite place to eat is going away!” customer RaeAnn Parri wrote in a recent post.