Newtonville's Karoun Restaurant to Close after 40 Years

NEWTON, MA - Karoun, one of the few Armenian restaurants in the greater Boston area first opened on Newbury Street in the Back Bay in 1977, it moved to Newtonville a couple of years later in 1979. This week the owners announced they were closing this June to make way for a new development slated to open there.

"After 40 wonderful years at the Karoun, we have decided to close the restaurant at the end of June. It was not an easy decision to make, but we feel it was the right one for us. Our decision was partly based on the fact that the building housing Karoun has been sold and is slated to be taken down later this year," said founder John Eurdolian on the Karoun Restaurant website.

Karoun is known as much for its kebabs, Middle-Eastern, Armenian and Mediterranean dishes, as it is for belly dancers and live international music on Saturdays on Washington Street.

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What's next for the spot where the restaurant used to sit for decades? Mixed-use development, according to a profile in the Newton TAB.

Eurdolian basically fell into the restaurant business, according to this story from Patch. And he took his entire family with him when he did.

“It was totally accidental,” he recalled at the time. “I was getting my master’s degree in business at Boston University and I needed money, so a friend of mine suggested that I work in a restaurant. I just fell in love with the business. I knew very little about cooking or managing, but everybody helped – my mother started cooking, my dad, my sisters got in.”

Read about the family affair at the restaurant here.