F4 THURSDAY, AUGUST 8, 2019 LATIMES.COM/FOOD
frequent appearances). Dips of
eggplant and yogurt star as appe-
tizers, as does ash-e reshteh, a
fragrant vegetable noodle soup.
Cucumbers and tomatoes domi-
nate the salads.
Helou and Iranian American
food writers Andy Baraghani and
Naz Deravian all boiled down my
query about the menus’ universal-
ity to the same essence: The
khoresh, or stew, is the fundament
of Iranian home cooking, with
infinite individual, regional and
seasonal variations; families and
groups tend to go out for kebabs,
and the dishes available at the
restaurants are meant to have
widespread appeal. (I have more
on the topic this week in our free
critics’ newsletter, Tasting Notes;
you can subscribe at
latimes.com/tastingnotes.)
Yet the more Helou and I ate,
the more distinct every restaurant
became. We could discern the
precise seasoning of the meats
(and lack thereof), or the exact
thickness of the yogurt dips, or the
hoped-for weightlessness of the
rice; exceptional specialties
leaped out to us.
When dining out, I tend to take
experiences at face value and
gather context later; Helou is the
opposite. Regal and enigmatic,
but also kind and slyly mis-
chievous, she strikes a singular
presence. She has an extraordi-
nary head of undulating silver hair,
like ripples in a pond on a swelter-
ing day when the air
above also shimmers
in waves. She has
many on-the-spot
inquiries for servers
and owners — about
how much oil the
kitchen uses for the
crispy rice, about
where in Iran the owner is from
and how long she’s been in Ameri-
ca, about the proper consistency
of ab-goosht (more on that later).
People readily answer the ques-
tions; her stately, inquiring dispo-
sition usually prompts a few ques-
tions of their own.
We were in total agreement
about the stalwarts that most
impressed us. One omission may
surprise readers: Raffi’s Place in
Glendale, a cherished institution
for more than 25 years, which
neither of us much enjoyed. It was
our first stop, and it was the first
time Helou encountered the cus-
tom in local Persian restaurants
that she doesn’t recall from her
trips to Iran: ladling one or two
thick stews directly on top of conti-
nent-shaped servings of tahdig,
the prized crackling, caramelized
layer of rice that forms at the
bottom of the pot. “Why would
they do this?” she cried. “Enjoying
the crispness is the whole point. It
absolutely ruins the texture.” We
encountered stews spooned over
tahdigeverywhere we ate. Her
disdain never relented.
If the cooking at Raffi’s didn’t
wow us overall that day, the joyful
sense of fellowship among the
customers did. “The big groups —
the aunts and uncles, the many
generations — and it’s absolutely
packed on a Tuesday lunch,”
Helou said. “We could basically
have been in Iran.” Witnessing how
these havens nurture community
was as important to us as the
eating: the boisterous families, the
dignified older solo diners, the
phonetic melodies of Farsi (and
sometimes Armenian; Glendale in
particular has a long-established
Iranian Armenian population)
often chiming through the dining
rooms.
With the perfume of meats
grilled over charcoal clinging to
our clothes, we ranked our five
favorite local Iranian restaurants.
- Taste of Tehran
“The quality of the cooking
really jumped notably at the
smaller restaurants,” Helou pro-
nounced as we finished our meal
at this tiny six-table boîtehidden
among a thicket of other Iranian
American cafes and markets in
Westwood. It was our grand finale
after 2½ days of eating, but even
through our overstuffed fatigue we
recognized its superiority.
Chef and owner Saghar
Fanisalek grew up in Shiraz, an
ancient city in south-central Iran.
She moved to the U.S. in 2003 and
first worked at Shaherzad, one of
Westwood’s longest-standing
kebab houses; she opened Taste of
Tehran in 2013. Her menu dabbles
in modernist lavash wraps and
renegade concoctions such as
spiced lentil-quinoa salad with
raisins and dates, but the heart of
her cooking lands squarely in
Iranian restaurant traditions:
kebabs, rice and dips, all done with
uncommon finesse.
Koobidehkebabs — an Iranian
classic of ground meat shaped
with distinctive finger-width in-
dentations — were the compara-
tive standard Helou and I ordered
from restaurant to restaurant.
The exemplar at Taste of Tehran
showed a master’s touch, the
grated onion in the tender-singed
beef added in just the right pro-
portions, every bite vibrantly
seasoned. Same for the still-rosy
filet shish kebab and the lemony
grilled chicken. Mast-o-khiar
(yogurt mixed with chopped cu-
cumber and mint) and mast-o-
mousir(yogurt with shallot;
amazing with the fluffy rice and
kebabs) found a silky medium,
neither gluey nor
watery like so many
versions we encoun-
tered.
For a snug space, it
delivered primo peo-
ple-watching: a
grandmother doting
on her two grandchil-
dren while the mom distributed
plates of chicken; a straight-
backed man carefully composing
balanced forkfuls of grilled trout,
rice and tomato. The restaurant’s
name may hearken back to
Fanisalek’s native land, but this is
a quietly wonderful way to taste —
and experience — the best of
Tehrangeles.
1915 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles,
(310) 470-0022, tasteoftehran.com.- Attari Sandwich
Shop/Attari Grill
The sandwich shop, with its
signatures such as thinly sliced
beef tongue with pickles on a soft
French roll, is a Westwood main-
stay. But the next-door grill has a
more comfortable setting and a
handful of distinguishing special-
ties, including sabzi polo mahi
(fried trout with herbed rice), a
vision of greenness that’s tradi-
tionally served at Nowruz, the
Persian New Year celebrated in
the spring. Helou pointed out that
even the walnut halves on a side
plate of herbs had been soaked to
properly revive them.
I was on the lookout for a su-
perlative version of kuku sabzi, an
herb-dense egg dish similar to a
frittata that’s also a requisite at
Nowruz. I didn’t find my ideal,
honestly, but the one at Attari
came the closest. The kebabs are
solid, the donbalanbeing the front
runner. Our soft-spoken, septua-
genarian server blushed when we
asked him to translate that word;
Helou immediately understood it
was lamb’s testicles when she saw
his embarrassment. He charmed
us both madly.
1388 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles,
(310) 441-5488, atarisandwiches
.info. - Hen House Grill
“Do you want to mash the
ab-goosht, or would you like us to
do it?” asked the man at the
counter taking our order.
“Oh, we’ll do it,” Helou said
instantly.
We’d requested dizi, a dish
named for the traditional vessel in
which to serve the ab-goosht, a
tomato-laced lamb and chickpea
stew. Helou knew the ritual: Begin
by draining the stew’s broth into a
bowl, and then mixing in torn
pieces of accompanying flatbread.
Then, with a masher made to fit
the size of the dizi, smoosh the
lamb and beans into a texture
somewhere between coarse and
smooth; there’s no one correct
consistency. The ceremony, and
the earthy goodness of the sepa-
rate components, felt wholly
nourishing.
Many of the stews we sampled
during our trek tasted one-dimen-
sional, but a bowl of ghormeh sabzi
(beef, kidney beans and herbs)
had a whole dried lime animating
the dish with its unique, musky-
pungent sourness.
The counter area at Hen House
Grill feels rather lifeless — but
walk out to the patio and, then,
aha, here’s the heartening scene:
young parents and their children,
gatherings of women and couples,
pouring the broth from their dizi,
nodding approvingly at the juici-
ness of their kebabs, sipping
strong tea with a distant scent of
cardamom.
4515 Campus Drive, Irvine, (949)
786-2000, henhousecampus.com.- Nersses Vanak
If you live closer to Glendale
than to Irvine, this handsomely
spare restaurant is your destina-
tion for dizi; the version here
brings the lamb-rich umami
depth, a truth noted in a 2016
review by Jonathan Gold. After
Helou engaged co-owner Romik
Abediyan in conversation, asking
him about his preferred texture of
mashed ab-goosht(he pounded it
for us at the table to a near puree),
he carried over a side of seer torshi
— small whole heads of pickled
garlic, a specialty of coastal Gilan
province in northern Iran. Some
versions age for a decade or more
to be spreadable like cheese; this
one was young, but its intensity
sliced straight through the stew’s
meatiness. As a contrast to the
stew, sturgeon over dilled rice is
terrific in its simplicity.
6524 San Fernando Road, Glen-
dale, (818) 550-7800, nersses.com. - Shamshiri Grill
Our pick among the larger,
older-guard Westwood kebab
houses. Helou’s inquisitiveness
seemed to irk our surly server, who
disappeared for long stretches,
but he couldn’t diminish our ap-
preciation of the cooking. Chefs
tend the flames and the skewers
behind a glassed-in grill; this is a
fine place to splurge on pricier cuts
of meat such as rack of lamb ke-
bab.
The menu, like the dining
room, sprawls, so it is wise to zero
in on the several specials available
only a few days a week. It’s worth
stopping by on Tuesday, Wednes-
day or Thursday for tahchin, a
savory rice cake mixed with yogurt
and egg, layered with chicken or
lamb, baked and crowned with
crimson barberries.
1712 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles,
(310) 474-1410, shamshiri.com.WORTHY
STOPS BEYOND
RESTAURANTS:Sangak at
Wholesome Choice
The food court of this Irvine
grocery store serves kebabs and
fragrant stews (and also pastas,
shawarma and crepes) to a clam-
oring lunchtime crowd. The mar-
ket’s true glory, though, is sangak,
an Iranian whole-wheat flatbread
freckled with sesame seeds; Helou
has seen it baked over beds of
stones. (Its name translates as“pebbles.”) A line usually forms for
the charred, soft-crisp, 4-foot
loaves. We draped ours over the
front of a shopping cart and
ripped off blistering hunks as we
wandered the aisles — and we
weren’t the only ones doing so.18040 Culver Drive, Irvine, (949)
551-4111, wholesomechoice.com.Sweets at Rex Bakery
Boxes of cookies and pastries
cram every square inch of table
space at this no-frills Sawtelle
bakery. It’s famous for cream
puffs, but we most enjoyed theIrvine grocery store Wholesome
Choice serves kebabs, above, as
well as a selection of Iranian spe-
cialties, right. Below, ab-goosht/
dizi, in the mashed stage, at
Nersses Vanak in Glendale.Sampling
SoCal’s best
Persian spots
[Persian,from F1]