Don't let Mini Kabob's demure size and Americana-adjacent location fool you - the pint-sized Glendale restaurant serves Los Angeles's best smoky, flame-kissed Armenian kebabs. Operated by two generations of the Martirosyan family, Mini Kabob blends Armenian and Egyptian flavors in fully loaded kebab and falafel plates served out of a makeshift takeout window. The younger Martirosyan, Armen, greets regulars by name at the window between flipping skewers of tender marinated beef and plating piles of bulgur-dotted tabbouleh.
Tariq Alaeddin has been an evangelist for toum, the simple whipped Lebanese sauce whose name simply means "garlic," for most of his life. When his mom would pick up a rotisserie chicken from Walmart, he'd ask her to drive across town to a Middle Eastern grocery to pick up some toum to go with it. Toum was also the centerpiece of his earliest restaurant idea.