Adana Honey Cake

Cake Los Angeles

Adana's stacks their off menu honey cake nine layers high in Glendale.

Edward Khechemyan, who’s of Armenian descent and whose father grew up in Iran, has run a restaurant called Adana for 16 years. Adana is the name of a city in southern Turkey, and you’ll find Turkish influences on the menu, along with odes to Armenia, Persia, and more nations from the Middle East. Oddly, it took a New York Times writer, Mark Bittman, to school the general populace on the wonders within the walls of this establishment, which rests on a fairly desolate stretch of San Fernando Road near the Glendale/Burbank border. The space features hand-painted frescoes on the walls, arches, wood panel flooring, tables with brown cloths, and high backed chairs. Adana serves good kebabs, salads and dips, but the dish that will haunt me is the honey cake, which isn’t even on the menu, and isn’t always available, but was uniquely amazing.

Alternating layers of sticky, resilient cake and honey cream stack nine high. The seemingly simple rhombus combines egg, flour, honey, cream, baking soda, and little else, and yet, it’s hard to think of a better L.A. cake. My friend Joe Mayer took an extra slice to enjoy on his red-eye flight back to JFK, and I took an extra slice so my girlfriend could experience my new favorite cake.

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Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

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