Peter

The sounds hit you the moment you step into the Munch Box cafe.

Eggs crackling in a buttery skillet. Bacon and hash browns sizzling on a grill. Bronzed bagels popping from a toaster.

The cooks on the grill give orders to the cashiers. The cashiers ring up the dine-in customers, drop napkins into food-filled bags and hand them to the to-go customers.

A stocky man looks on from near the grill. He has piercing brown eyes and a grey-streaked beard. The block letters on his fitted black t-shirt read: “Munch Box. All Day Breakfast and Lunch.” The side of his baseball cap reads: “Avo.”

Avedis “Avo” Jaborian is a Canadian of Armenian extraction. He owns the Munch Box in Henderson, Nevada. He came to the Las Vegas valley (which includes Henderson among its 2.2 million residents) in 2009. He opened the Munch Box in 2016.

And he’s been satisfying hungry suburbanites ever since.

Avo Jaborian chats with a customer. “When you get your food, there’s still some heat coming off it,” he said. Photo: Peter S. Levitt.

An Armenian from Canada makes his way to Las Vegas

Jaborian traveled a long road to get to Nevada. A road measuring 2,570 miles, to be exact.

“I was born and raised in Montreal,” Jaborian says. He, his brother and his sister grew up speaking three languages: French, English and, most culturally important, Armenian.

His Armenian grandparents, displaced by the genocide of 1915, relocated to neighboring Lebanon and Syria. Born in those countries, Jaborian’s own parents met by chance years later in Venezuela. They married, moved to Montreal and settled there in the 1970s.

A family in Canada soon followed.

“We grew up speaking Armenian in the household,” Jaborian says. “But we had to learn French and English at school in Montreal.”

Jaborian finished high school but then, for reasons more intuitive than explicable, he found himself yearning to live in the United States. So, in 2001, the 21-year-old decamped, alone, for New Jersey, where he worked the summer “beach season” in a restaurant on the Jersey shore.

When the summer crowd waned that autumn, a friend gave Jaborian a tip to find more work. Soon he was on the move again, this time to Green Bay, Wisconsin.

There, he worked at a local pancake restaurant, rising from line cook to general manager in just a few years. But despite his success at work, Jaborian kept a secret from his Green Bay friends.

“I liked the San Francisco 49ers, but all around me were these cheeseheads,” Jaborian says, using the nickname for the Green Bay Packers’ rabid fanbase. “I’d watch the Packers games with them but couldn’t tell them the truth if they were playing against the 49ers!”

After six years, Jaborian, on the recommendation of some Montreal friends, moved to Las Vegas. But when he arrived in 2009, he detoured off the restaurant path.

A fledging acting career and a popular breakfast café

Jaborian started life in Las Vegas as a travel agent and a taxi driver. Then, with no experience or training, he turned to acting. “It was something I always wanted to do and, back then, I had the good looks for it,” he says with a laugh. “Any role that needed a young, middle eastern-looking man, I would put in for.”

He hired an agent but didn’t make much headway. “They didn’t really tell you, but middle eastern-looking and, unfortunately, terrorist-looking guys were in demand at that time,” Jaborian said.

Even so, work was hard to come by. “I was once on-screen for about two seconds for a Showtime drama. It happened so fast my friends didn’t even know it was me.”

Things took an upswing in 2016 when Jaborian opened Munch Box. This time, his idea was an instant hit.

“It’s a breakfast place, grab-and-go. We do lunch, too. A few tables for dine-in, but we do a lot of to-go orders.” Jaborian insists that all his ingredients are fresh, and that all orders are cooked to each customer’s exact demands. He credits his Armenian upbringing for this approach.

Jaborian keeps a close watch on the action. “The only way I can pay him back is to work hard for him,” said Alexis Camacho, a Munch Box cook. Photo: Peter S. Levitt.

These traits are not lost on Jaborian’s employees. When his father died in Mexico a few years ago, Alexis Camacho, Munch Box’s long-time cook, couldn’t afford to attend the funeral.

Unasked, his boss stepped in.

“Avo gave me money, gave me emotional support,” Camacho says. “He did the same thing when my mom died in Mexico a few years later.

“He’s a good friend, my guardian angel,” Camacho says.

Jaborian downplays his actions. “I have to help,” he says. “It’s the Armenian way.”

Iraqi-born cashier Ronaldo Matti also appreciates his boss. “Avo’s quiet and nice to his employees,” Matti says. “And he gets the best food, nothing frozen. He orders the smallest amounts of food, to make sure that everything’s served fresh.”

Living the American dream, by way of Canada and Armenia

At 43, Jaborian has not yet decided on his next step. But for now, he’s clearly relishing his own version of the American dream. His success even led him to open a second Munch Box store, just a few years after the first one took off.

The five-year plan? “Hopefully, both Munch Boxes will still be here,” Jaborian said. Then he smiles. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll even have a few more by then.”

You can follow me on X at @psl_write.