This Philly restaurant owner created a virtual dining experience for the stay-at-home age | We The People

Meet Ara Ishkhanian, owner of Apricot Stone restaurant.

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When the coronavirus stay-at-home order hit in March and restaurants were relegated to serving take-out only, Ara Ishkhanian, owner of Apricot Stone, lost the one thing he loved best about his business.

“We opened a sit-down restaurant because we wanted to be with people,” he said, of his Mediterranean grill in Northern Liberties. “This is the opposite of that.”

At the beginning, Ishkhanian still got to chat with customers, who came in to order and pick up their take-out, but as restrictions tightened, all he could do was wave to them through the glass when they came to get their orders.

“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “There’s no sweet talk, no fluff.”

Ishkhanian, 36, a tall man with a deep voice who, admittedly, “could talk the ears off a statue,” got bored. Quick.

“I’m going to work seven days a week and if I hit the boredom wall, I assumed other people must be going stir crazy,” he said. “Not being able to talk to customers was hitting me.”

So to better serve his customers — while also serving himself up a little self-care — Ishkhanian created a virtual dining experience.

Each curious culinary affair begins with a call to Apricot Stone from the customer, who makes a reservation. Ishkhanian then emails the customer the menu and a brief questionnaire.

At the agreed-upon time, Ishkhanian — decked out in a crisp, black shirt with pen and notepad in hand — video calls the customers from across a table at his restaurant, where he has a lit votive candle and water and wine glasses filled before him.

As traditional Armenian music plays in the background, Ishkhanian welcomes you to Apricot Stone and asks if you have any questions about the menu (he swears his grape leaves and pakhlava are the best in Philly).

“The first couple of times I did it I was rusty because I hadn’t taken an order or approached a table in a month, so it was really weird,” he said. “But it comes back pretty naturally.”

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For restaurant lovers craving a dining experience, Ishkhanian seems like a mirage at first. It’s hard to believe he’s real, that this experience — so ingrained in our culture, but so foreign right now — is actually happening.

That is, until something reminds you he can, indeed, see you, too.

“Just to let you know you are our first White Claw drinkers,” Ishkhanian said, calling me out on my beverage choice (I eventually leveled up to red wine for dinner.)

After taking the order, Ishkhanian brings it to the kitchen and returns to ask if you’d prefer to pay by Venmo or credit card, noting that a 20% tip, all of which goes to his furloughed waitstaff, will be added to your bill.

He logs off, but says he’ll be back to check on you soon. About 10 minutes after the in-house delivery service drops the meal at your door, he video calls again to make sure everything is OK.

“I’ve talked to people for 15 minutes on that follow-up call,” he said. “It’s kind of nice when you don’t talk about coronavirus-related stuff.”

The virtual dining experience — which he’s done about 25 times now — is a far cry from his first job, working at his parents’ Armenian deli on the Main Line in the early ’90s.

Ishkhanian’s mom, Fimy, was born in Syria to Armenian parents who fled the genocide there. She moved to Toronto for a better life and met her husband, Hagop, who is also Armenian.

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In 1981, the couple married and moved to the Philly area. They had two children and opened their deli in 1993 at Albrecht’s Market in Narberth, where Fimy was the cook.

Ishkhanian grew up working the register there, then doing inventory shopping and catering.

“Back then, every customer that came in we had to educate them on what hummus was,” he said. “Now, every sports bar you go to has hummus as appetizer.”

After graduating from Lower Merion High, Ishkhanian studied business management at Temple University, with the goal of helping his family expand its deli.

While Ishkhanian was in school, though, the market where the deli was located closed, and his parents moved back to Toronto. After graduation, Ishkhanian joined them for six months, before persuading his family to come back to Philly.

“It’s a weird thing, Philadelphia,” he said. “And you miss it."

In January 2016, Ishkhanian and his mother, who co-own Apricot Stone, opened their restaurant in Northern Liberties. She’s head chef and he manages the front of house.

“We like to call it Armenian, because pretty much everything we do is Armenian," Ishkhanian said. “But the official name is Mediterranean grill because the food we cook is so old you can’t really pinpoint where it started.”

Though he lives in Upper Darby, Ishkhanian said the restaurant is his home, since he spends more time there. He’s even open on Sundays now, to give the few people he’s still able to employ some extra shifts.

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Ishkhanian misses his regular customers, terribly, but his virtual dining experience has helped ease the pain — and it’s even introduced him to some new faces, too.

“We had a nurse, recently, with her roommate, they had never eaten with us before,” he said. “The fact that she’d probably just got off a long shift and all she wanted was our food, that was pretty neat.”

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