Restaurateur John Vartanian has died. The patriarch of the Vintage Press in Visalia was 86

For John Vartanian, the Vintage Press was part of the family.

He opened the Visalia restaurant in 1966 in a small spot with a hofbrau-style lunch menu and sit-down dinner, and over the years his family — wife Arlene Vartanian and his 11 children — all worked in the business.

With the help of sons David and Greg, the Vintage Press came to be known by name as one of the city’s best and most elegant restaurants, and spawned a second restaurant, the diner/speakeasy Jack and Charlie’s.

Vartanian died May 5, after an unexpected illness. He was 86 years old.

“He was very devoted to this restaurant,” says David Vartanian, who serves as head chef at the Vintage Press.

“My dad was was involved until the very end.”

He had been less involved in the past few years, but that just meant he wasn’t at the restaurant every day. He was far from retired, David Vartanian says.

“We’re going to carry on with what he instilled in us,” he says.

And that was a passion for the restaurant industry and a drive to make it, and the Vintage Press, better every year.

“They just loved the business in every way, shape and form,” says Nick Anthony, a family friend who did marketing for the Vintage Press for many years.

Vartanian was purposeful in how he grew the restaurant, Anthony says. Seemingly, every year there was some kind of new addition. That carried over to the industry, too, Anthony says.

Vartanian was always looking for ways to enhance the marketplace, whether that was a partnership with Tulare County schools to bring students into the workplace or championing some (now-long standing) community events, like Visalia’s Waiter Race.

“He wanted to help people, and that’s what he went and did,” Anthony says.

It didn’t hurt that those events often drew a crowd to the Vintage Press.

Vartanian worked to create an annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade, even though he was Armenian, not Irish. The parade would be a way to showcase the College of Sequoias music program, with the bonus of bringing people to downtown Visalia and into his restaurant.

“He did things that would create a crowd at the restaurant,” David Vartanian says.

“He kept an eye open for a good idea.”

Vartanian is survived by 11 children, 10 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by two wives, Shirley (Stone) Vartanian (1967) and Arlene Vartanian (2006), and two sons.

Memories and sympathy for the family can be shared at www.millerchapel.com.

This story was originally published May 21, 2021 at 11:00 AM.