THENEWYORKER,M AY4, 2020 9
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRYAN ANSELM / REDUX FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
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TABLESFORTWO
Taste of Persia
According to one school of culinary
thought, the best way to prepare vege-
tables is barely at all; they should be
eaten as fresh and as close to raw as pos-
sible. Lately, I’ve been appreciating the
opposite: the power of a long, slow cook.
The other night, I marvelled at the way
pods of okra split open into silky star-
bursts when simmered as long as the chef
Saeed Pourkay does for his khoresht bam-
ieh, a traditional Iranian dish. The stew,
which I ordered for delivery, was thick
with the okra’s perfectly round, yellowish
seeds; every few bites yielded a tender
morsel of shaggy beef, too.
The fact that Pourkay, who is sixty-
seven, is managing to make and deliver
large quantities of food on his own during
a pandemic will come as no surprise to
anyone familiar with his life story, which
he himself describes, rather matter-of-
factly, as “very inspirational.” For decades,
he and his four brothers, émigrés from
Tehran, ran a printshop in Manhattan. In
2010, Pourkay sold his share and returned
to Iran for a visit, where he rediscovered
a latent childhood interest in cooking.
Back in New York—broke after a
series of bad investments and sleeping
in a friend’s warehouse in the Brook-
lyn Navy Yard—he decided to try
making a living from his newfound
hobby. He persuaded the organizers of
the Union Square Holiday Market to
give him a stall rent-free: he’d sell Ira-
nian food and pay them retroactively,
at the end of the season. The owners
of a nearby pizzeria let him use their
kitchen after hours to do the cooking.
The experiment worked, and the piz-
zeria owners agreed to let him stay be-
yond the holidays and even to rent him
a stretch of their counter. Taste of Persia
was born, a restaurant within a restau-
rant, beloved especially for Pourkay’s ash
reshteh, a dense soup packed with lentils,
split peas, noodles, onions, and herbs,
topped with caramelized garlic, mint,
and fermented whey.
All was well until a few months ago,
when the pizzeria changed hands. Ac-
cording to Pourkay, the new owners
asked that he pay half their monthly
rent, instead of the quarter he had been
contributing. He declined, and so they
asked him to leave. They were on good
terms, he thought, until he learned that
Taste of Persia had been replaced with
a knockoff—Tasty Persia.
After protests and press coverage,
the pizzeria quickly closed Tasty Persia,
and, in February, Pourkay began mak-
ing plans to reopen Taste of Persia in a
home of its own, with the help of tens
of thousands of dollars raised from loyal
customers via GoFundMe. But, just as
he was preparing to sign a lease, New
York’s dining rooms were forced to close.
By the end of March, he said, “I was
constantly getting phone calls from my
customers—‘Can you cook for us?’” H e
was happy to oblige; the Middle Eastern
markets near his home in New Jersey
were open, which meant he had access
to all the ingredients he needed.
Every week since, Pourkay has posted
a short menu on his Facebook and Insta-
gram accounts (@tasteofpersianyc): three
or so dishes, sold in quart containers, with
a side of saffron-laced basmati rice, to be
ordered via e-mail for weekend delivery.
On a recent Saturday, he delivered sixty
orders throughout Manhattan himself;
couriers made drop-offs in Brooklyn,
Queens, and the Bronx. The family print-
shop, Print Icon, is closed to customers,
but Pourkay’s brothers have adapted
quickly, too: they’re using the shop’s laser
cutters to produce protective face shields,
available to hospitals at a discount.
In addition to the khoresht bamieh, my
haul included two other slow-cooked
stews that use vegetables to stretch a bit
of beef: khoresht aloo esfenaj, a luscious
mix of spinach and prunes brightened
with lemon and pomegranate juice, and
khoresht karafs, with slippery, parsley-
and-mint-flecked segments of celery
and artichoke that had nearly dissolved,
yet still tasted of spring. Persian food is
perfect for these times because it “doesn’t
go bad that fast,” Pourkay noted when we
spoke on the phone. “You keep it in your
refrigerator, three or four days—tastes
even better.” (Dishes $17-$25.)
—Hannah Goldfield
