West Adams is best known for a well-preserved strip of Victorian homes located southwest of downtown. Travel further west and the luster begins to fade, but one culinary gem endures, A. Partamian Bakery. Abraham Partamian founded the locally famous Armenian bakery in 1948, and son Leon presided over the family’s legacy until 2006, when he passed away. Leon handed down A. Partamian to longtime bakers Francisco Rosales and Jose Gonzales. As Bob Pool noted in his excellent LA Times article, the duo is from Zacatecas, Mexico, and worked at A. Partamian for 30 years before assuming control.

The wall-mounted menu is lean, with options like Peda, Boregs (cheese or spinach) or Cheoreg, plus Paklava dough and trays of Sarma. From that list, only the paklava and lahmajune are available for on-site consumption. Everything else, you have to take and bake. The new owners have added a Mexican influence, filling a case with pan dulce and topping the counter with custard filled breads. You can also buy jarred grape leaves, cans of coffee or as Miles Clements pointed out in a tweet, Colt 45.

Still, lahmajune is the bakery’s signature item, a vivid flatbread loaded with ground lamb, tomatoes and bell pepper that has more gamy intensity than the ground beef alternative at bakeries like Sasoun, Old Sasoon and Arax. The dough itself is a bit floppy compared to crispy cracker-like version at Sasoun, but Partamian’s bold flavor more than compensates.

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This entry is filed under Bakery, California, Los Angeles, Southern California, Westside.