Keeping a warm legacy alive

Their backgrounds are more burrito than boreg.

So how did a pair of childhood buddies from Zacatecas, Mexico, turn into two of Los Angeles' most popular Armenian bakers?

On West Adams Boulevard, Francisco Rosales and Jose Gonzales did it by adopting Leon Partamian's family recipes -- and then getting "adopted" by Partamian themselves.

The crusty owner of the 60-year-old A. Partamian Bakery in the Mid-City area liked the way they cooked his sarma and lahmajune. And he liked the two of them.

So when Partamian died 17 months ago, he gave his bakery business -- and the building that houses its vintage ovens and bread display cases -- to both of them.

Partamian's gift has brought a sigh of relief to longtime Armenian American customers who feared that the weathered storefront bakery would be shuttered and used for something else in a neighborhood that in recent decades has turned from white to black and now brown.

"This is the best lahmajune anywhere. It is the absolute best," said Gail Deovlet Chancellor, 62, a homemaker who lives in Huntington Beach and travels to the bakery to shop. "It took me an hour and 15 minutes to drive here. But it's worth it."

Like most of Leon Partamian's longtime customers, Chancellor knew of the shopkeeper's desire to eventually pass the bakery on to his two loyal bakers. He had never married and had no children.

"After we'd been working with him 20 or 25 years he was telling customers that he was going to leave the store to his 'boys' when he was gone," Rosales said.

Partamian had quickly taken his two young bakers under his wing. He helped them obtain green cards and with other family immigration issues. He loaned them money when his "boys" had an emergency.

But Partamian left no written will when in late 2006 he died unexpectedly at age 73 of a heart attack. It took more than a year for his heirs to wade through probate paperwork so they could sign over the business and its building to Rosales and Gonzales, both 56.

Rosales immigrated to the U.S. in 1969 and Gonzales in 1971. They were dishwashers in a Bob's Big Boy restaurant in 1975 when they were introduced to Partamian. He offered them both jobs.

It took about six months for the pair to learn how to craft the delicacies that Partamian was famous for: the boreg, paklava, sarma and the lahmajune -- the eight-inch circles of dough topped with ground lamb, tomatoes and bell peppers and cooked in a 450-degree oven.