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Chef Vartan Abgaryan
Chef Vartan Abgaryan For Chef Abgaryan, cooking came out of nowhere. Initially, he dreamt of being a doctor and pursued this dream by attending college in Santa Barbara. Like many college students, Vartan worked at a restaurant waiting tables. He quickly found out that he was not cut out to be a waiter and begged for the manager to let him wash dishes instead; anything to get him out of the dining room. Once in the kitchen, it was not long before he was allowed to work the line. Chef Vartan loved cooking on his own time and this translated instantly to his work on the line. The next logical step for him was to enroll in culinary school. Vartan moved to Las Vegas for two years while he attended Le Cordon Bleu.
He returned to Los Angeles to lead the kitchens of acclaimed restaurateur Tim Goodell’s Red Pearl Kitchen, ‘A’ Restaurant, and Public Kitchen. For the next three years, Abgaryan served as executive chef at Cliff’s Edge Restaurant to great critical acclaim. LA Weekly’s restaurant critic Besha Rodell remarked, “Abgaryan’s food is composed above all else — the chef focuses as much on visual beauty as on taste.” In 2015, Chef Abgaryan joined forces with Emil Eyvazoff to debut a new, world-class dining destination on the 71st floor of the US Bank Tower.