Everybody enjoyed the book. We agreed on several high points in his story and were all very impressed in all that he accomplished.
A few members in the group had eaten at Mardikian's San Francisco restaurant 'Omar Khayyam'. At least a couple of members had also met George Mardikian.
We were impressed by Mardikian's work on improving the food at various U.S. military installations around the world. Wherever he went he tried to make the cooks in the military kitchens more interested in what they were doing and tried to teach them simple changes that they could make which made the food more appealing to the service men.
We noted how he put a lot of effort into learning historic Armenian recipes and how food was flavored and prepared all across the Middle East. He made great use of this later on in his restaurants.
We also liked how he focused on helping Armenians who ended up as displaced persons in settlement camps across Europe after World War II. He arranged a lot of fundraising to help the people out and also worked on getting many of them access to move to various places in the Americas.
We noted the story of how he and his wife had decided to adopt a pair of children from one of the Armenian camps. When they found out that they were living with their grandmother in the camp and how they were the primary focus of the grandmother's life, however, they changed their mind and instead helped the grandmother and the children emigrate to the U.S. and provided them with a house and money to live on.
He was always very family oriented and helped various family members move to the U.S. and gave them work once they were here.
I'm sure that there are many other points that we discussed. If you haven't read the book, do so. It's worth it.
Until next month ...
Leroy