Armenia: The Dolma Battle Goes On

ARMENIA: THE DOLMA BATTLE GOES ON

EurasiaNet.org, NY
July 12 2013

For the third year, Yerevan played host to an annual festival
celebrating dolma — the dish made by stuffing grape leaves and
other vegetables with an assortment of ingredients. Reports the
Asbarez website:

Taste-Testers flocked through the flanked winged oxen of the Sardarabad
memorial for the third annual Dolma Festival on Wednesday, July
10. Traditional music, singing, and dancing set the mood for the
festival as 24 groups locked in a battle of vine leaves and stuffing
for prizes in a number of categories including the longest Dolma.

The festival was organized by the Armenian Cookery Traditions
Development and Protection Organization (ACTDP) and exposed visitors
to a number of variations of the traditional Armenian dish. Qajik
Levonyan, a representative of the Araratian Restaurant , said that
the name of the three thousand-year-old dish stems from the Armenian
word Dol, which means vine leaves, and that the recipe’s secret lies
in the freshness of the ingredients.

As previously reported on this blog, though, the dolma festival is
more than just about dolma. This being the Caucasus, the event also
has a political subtext to it, with ACTDP head Sedrak Mamulyan telling
Armenian reporters two years ago that one of the motivating factors
behind the festival was to keep dolma (or “tolma” as he called it)
from being “appropriated” by neighboring countries. “We have done
nothing to patent our national dishes,” he said at the time.

Other countries in the region may have an interest in keeping Armenia
from patenting dolma, but they may find that the country has a new
claim to fame in the stuffed grape leaf department. According to
reports, this year’s festival yielded a new world record for the
longest dolma — a 25-foot behemoth that some enterprising Azeri or
Turk is very likely now thinking about how to beat.

Meanwhile, video from the Armenian dolma festival (including a
visit from the American ambassador in Yerevan, who may have just
inadvertently stepped into one of the Caucasus’ myriad food fights)
below:

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress