Yardstick. Mastering arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of lying. The Zankou Chicken Murders The creator of the California-based food chain kills his mother, sister and, finally, himself. It didn’t occur to Rita that her mother-in-law might be miffed about Mardiros’s desire for his sons to take over the business. He rose from his bed on the morning of January 14, 2003, took a shower, and got dressed.

It was another to know that all this legacy had been washed over by one act. Human.

Nobody was like him. Wherever they went as a family, he made his wife take a seat in the back so his mother could sit beside him. He belonged here.

Chain restaurants depend on a strong central core that demands uniformity in the branches. He hadn’t gone to their funerals. “Everybody thinks we are making millions,” she said. He was going to die anyway, so I don’t count his life. You know?”, “I slapped her on the hand. But I don’t believe him now. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.”. By signing up to the VICE newsletter you agree to receive electronic communications from VICE that may sometimes include advertisements or sponsored content. To find out more about the cookies we use, see our. He drove up the canyon to the mansion that sat on a ledge in the Verdugo Hills. Wife.

The Zankou Chicken Murders: The Story of a Family Torn Apart by Sickness, Murder and Garlic Sauce And they've responded with similar reticence to queries about the infamous "Zankou murders," a triple homicide, and the irrevocable schism in the family-owned business, now forever tarnished by events of such tragic proportion.

He didn’t know she had a listening device broadcasting to a pimp, who stole his money . Up the hill, where the canyon oaks gave way to palm trees, neighbors had spilled out of their million-dollar estates.

What is written no one can change. Then he walked into the living room, sat on the couch, and shot himself in the head.

A giant map of Los Angeles, lifted from the pages of a Thomas Guide, shouted a welcome to customers. “Steve, something bad has happened,” his mother cried at the door. Rita Iskenderian owns the website and doesn’t include them. He didn’t say a word to the young man he had once regarded as his fifth son. Had Steve been home that day, he might have sensed trouble or at least insisted that his father not go alone. The chain is known for its hefty portions of chicken, hummus, falafel and pita bread. By the time he got to the doctor, it was too late. Others insisted there was no sense to be made of it because life made no sense, death made no sense. When he wasn’t working, he was catting around with his own gang of rich buddies.

He turned to his mother.  “My grandmother and aunt.

Gavin Newsom and health officials at a critical moment.

The family had decided it was time to honor Mardiros and open a new store in West L.A. Because he was the son most like his father, the job was given to him. Just three years earlier, he had been charged with shooting at a prostitute and her pimp and had faced a life sentence. “I don’t think things can be fixed,” Iskenderian said. Disneyland’s push to reopen sets up critical moment in California’s coronavirus fight. His voice was calm. The mission was simple…

Mardiros put in long hours. He packed his bags and headed north, past Santa Clarita and Bakersfield, straight up Highway 99. Bummer! They packed what they could and went to live at a hotel in Glendale while the house was refurbished. He and Rita drove a Jaguar and a black Mercedes-Benz. Poets wrote about his Zankou chicken.

“You would think they stink of garlic,’’ Rita said, gesturing toward the women. “Whenever you open a business, you always want to break even,” he said.

The restaurants are especially known for their spit-roasted chicken, shawarma, falafel, tahini, and a "secret" garlic sauce. If he felt bad about neglecting his wife and children, he tried to make up for it by giving to the Armenian community. [5][8] (The original location and Montebello locations are not listed on the website; Rita Iskenderian owns the website and doesn't include them.)[9]. How good is it? From Hollywood to Anaheim, he had opened a chain of fast-food rotisserie chicken restaurants that dazzled the food critics and turned customers into a cult. The chain is known for its hefty portions of chicken, hummus, falafel and pita bread. It’s better than ever.”. Now Steve wasn’t sure what to do. Next week, he told himself.

And those lives belonged to my grandmother and my aunt. A detective halted him short . She looked up and shook her head.

Her disquiet was not only for what he had done to her and her children and the rest of the family but also for what he had done to himself, the stain across his name.

 She lived in a big house on the other side of the Verdugo Hills with her husband and two sons. No one was more lost than Steve himself .

“I still have hope for reconciliation. His Angels Flight pants touched so low to the ground you couldn’t tell if he was wearing shoes or not. To do less would be to dishonor Dad’s memory.”, Steve sat down on the couch next to his mother, leaned back, and closed his eyes. But you can't order a tarna wrap without garlic paste at Zankou. The popularity of the original restaurant on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, where the line often snakes out the door until its midnight closing, has even drawn the attention of rock stars.

1051 Benedict Canyon Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210.

Word of a new kind of fare, fast and tasty and light, spread to the critics. He and his Zankous had become part of the map. 4 in Anaheim and Zankou no. The moonlight confessions of Stevie Nicks. In the days before, he had pulled them aside one by one—Dikran, Steve, Ara, Vartkes—and told them he had no regrets. She was wearing a beautiful silk top, the color of eggplant, but he couldn’t tell.

He thinks a chain like Zankou with Middle Eastern-inspired food could catch on in diverse metropolitan areas. Over the following year, as he lay dying, his mother never once called him. He was the son of the Zankou Chicken mogul who had murdered his mother and sister and then had the decency to kill himself. This was as close as she would come to the business. Dzovig seated her brother at the table in the dining room, where she poured him a glass of lemonade. How could a woman who cooked with such love disown her son on his deathbed?

Of course, everyone knew this was no chore at all, because the mother, Margrit Iskenderian, the creator of the garlic paste and most every dish worth tasting at Zankou, was a woman who pulled her load and the load of three others . His smile was gorgeous.

I usually ask for extra garlic paste on the side, scooping it up with one of those tiny highlighter-yellow pickled Cascabella peppers and spreading it across the top layer of dark meat and fire-kissed caramelized skin that spills out of the pita like regurgitation from a mama bird's loving mouth. “He wanted to open a branch in Paris and ... one in Detroit,” Shenian said. We are different, each of us, but we are one. For 25 years, she had lived with Mardiros and Rita and their children, her bedroom the master bedroom, where a single photo, that of her and her son back in 1950s Lebanon, graced her dresser. If the verdict didn’t go his way, he faced life in prison. Sister. She would come home from work, Rita would greet her as usual at the front door, and she would walk right past him and into the kitchen without a word. He picked a tiny place next to a Laundromat on the corner of Sunset and Normandie—could there have been an uglier minimall in all of Hollywood?— and erected a sign with block letters in blue and red. It is believed that Iskenderian was in the late stages of colon and brain cancer, which might have affected his mental faculties. I want to live a great life. He turned away and walked a dozen paces to the leather couch in the living room. But I know how important this business is. We use this information in order to improve and customize your browsing experience and for analytics and metrics about our visitors both on this website and other media. The case ended in a mistrial.

His sister sat across from him, and his mother to his right.

It's the most LA-looking place to eat: a storefront in a mini-mall, next to a liquor store and a Laundromat in crappiest Eastern Hollywood. Rita’s inlaws and one of her nephews then countered with a lawsuit of their own, alleging wrongful death and seeking tens of millions of dollars from Mardiros’s estate. On a big black stove, 20 stainless steel pots filled with garbanzo beans—next week’s hummus—bubbled on the fire.

Steve saw an operation evolving from unprofessional to professional. Her hair was curly like his, as if she had just gotten out of the shower herself, and it was tinted an odd red.

But she doesn’t know what it takes to move this business forward. I met him when I was 12. Power’s crucial foundation is the ability to master your emotions…. Turn to any page, and you had the landscape of L.A. in bird’s-eye: parks in green, malls in yellow, cemeteries in olive, and freeways, the lifeblood, in red. He paid the monthly rent on a building in Ontario that a black preacher, a friend, had converted into his first church.

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. And Zankou appears as the fictional Palestinian-run Al Abbas, which opens adjacent to Goldblatt's Deli to the ire of Larry's Zionist-leaning friends (who still allow that the chicken is spectacular). There was no cash register, no table, no chairs.

His wife would recall his putting on the white silk suit that hadn’t fit him in years. The pampered son of Zankou Chicken hardly noticed Rita Hovakimian, who was seven years younger. Her prince. No restaurant, though, seemed to be dedicated to their cuisine, at least none that served it fast and delicious and at a price that would bring customers back.
His head began to throb, the pain so severe that his sons had to take turns rubbing his skull with their knuckles. The Zankou Chicken Murders. Now that he was dying, his dream of building an empire, 100 Zankous across the land, a Zankou in every major city, would be his four sons’ to pursue. “Please, Dad, no.”.

After considering opening a dry cleaning business or selling men's suits, Iskenderian recognized a lack of restaurants catering to the growing Mediterranean immigrant population in Los Angeles.
What geniuses!” They had taken a city that made no sense to itself and given it a structure, a syntax, that even foreigners like him could fathom. With them, the Christian Arabs kept a narrow edge. Who can guess the mind of a man capable of such acts?