Persian food by Norm... visiting food critic

Blog entry by Norm (Visiting Food Critic)

On our first night we had a great meal at Kathreen's grandma's house: Beef stew in a thick cilantro and parsley sauce,roast chicken in savory tomato, onion and saffron sauce, rice, salad, and crispies from the bottom of the rice pot, all delicious.

The next night we had fava bean, rice, and meat all mixed together and formed into balls about the size of baseballs, and a scruptious
baked eggplant dish.

We went out to a great kabob restaurant where the chef stands on a platform chopping up lamb with a huge chopping knife about 18 inches long and 6 inches wide. Kabob comes in minced lamb, cubed lamb or beef, cubed chicken or lamb chops. Usually
served with soft warm flat breat and/or rice, yogurt, and grilled tomatoes.

Kabob stands and restaurants are everywhere and definitely the most common food. We've had some almost everyday and I'm still loving it. If I don't have some kind of kabob for 24 hours, I start to get the shakes.

Kathreen's great uncle and aunt took us to a wonderful rustic restaurant specializing in a dish called abgoosht.

This is a hearty lamb stew with garbanzo beans and potatoes served in tall individual earthenware pots. There's an art to eating abgoosht. First you put the small pieces of lamb fat in the bowl and smash them. Then you tear some flat bread into small pieces and put them on the bottom of your bowl, then pur the thin gravey into your bowl.

Eat this mixture, then put some lamb, garbanzo's and potatoes into your bowl and mash these with the provided wooden pestle to a consistency like refried beans. Spread this mixture on flat bread, top with leafy herbs, sweet raw onion and maybe some eggplant relish and eat- Fabulous!



Bakeries specialize in one of about 4 kinds of flat bread. Some very flat and crisp, others softer, chew and a little thicker. You always buy them hot out a wood burning oven and carry them home unwrapped to be eaten within an hour. Daniel and I bought a wonderfully soft bread about 2 feet long and 10 inches wide sprinkled with sesame seeds for 40 cents- we couldn't wait to get it home so we tore pieces off and ate as we walked. I'm a bread lover so this was heavenly.

Dg here, to give some more insight on the food here. The first day in Esphahon, Kathy ordered a dessert. When it came out, it looked delicious, a shiny, bright orange pudding looking thing, I thought it was mango pudding. It even had strands of what I thought was mango. I took a bite, and it tasted pretty dayam good, but not quite mango like I thought. I asked Kat, and she said "Those strands you are eating, are LAMB!!", "UHHHHGGG!! LAMB!?! lamb pudding?! you gotta be shittin me!" I responded, needless to say, that was the last bite of dessert I took.

Like my dad said, We've been eating kabob's pretty much every single day. So to combat a kabob overdose (keep in mind we are here for 3.5 weeks), I've been trying out the Iranian fast food, like pizza, burgers, fries and hotwings. The pizza Karl and I had was a bologni, semi deep dish pizza. Surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. It came with ketchup, cuz all the iranians smother thier pizza in ketchup, I tried this but it just didn't do it for me. The burgers are off the hook, they are GIGANTIC, bout the circumference of 3 big mac's put together! They taste hella good too, like the persian burger at bongo burger on telegraph (the best burger in the bay area imo).