Food Feature: Plenty Persian

The metro area has a number of ethnic restaurants that are fun to visit and that make delicious food, too, resulting in some amazing, even hilarious, cultural and culinary adventures. There are scores of Jamaican restaurants strung along Memorial Drive between Decatur and Stone Mountain — an area that is beginning to attract Ethiopian restaurants as well. And, of course, there is the mother lode that is Buford Highway, with its enclaves of Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese food, along with a myriad of other cuisines, marching from Lenox Square to the town of Buford itself. All of these places get plenty of publicity, some of it by reviews in these very pages.

Then there is quiet cuisine. If you are an aficionado of Persian food, you are already aware that Roswell Road is home to a handful of Persian restaurants catering to a diverse community. One of them is Salar, named for the cuisine’s signature bread, a wide, round, chewy thing that is at its glorious best as a base for aromatic herbs and fresh, crumbly feta cheese. It’s like nothing you pick up at the supermarket and worlds better than most examples at our local farmers markets, too. The feta, sweet in this instance, balances sharp onion and radish, biting mint and seasonal herbs. Do not fail to begin a meal with this panir sabzi. Or make it a refreshing afternoon snack.

These contrasts are an excellent introduction to Persian cuisine, which goes from one extreme to the other, often in the same dish. This is especially true of khoresht, a meat dish resembling stew.

Khoresht bademjan, for example, begins with cubed beef and sauteed eggplant simmered in Persian tomato sauce served with basmati rice. This is not so much served as presented. First the herbs, then the rice and finally the meat and vegetables themselves, a chunky concoction reminiscent of chili. This rather densely flavored mixture seeps into the lemony-tasting basmati, steamed so that each kernel of rice is separate from the other.

Salar offers at least two khoresht each day from a list of possibilities that includes khoresht ghaymeh, beef and split peas enhanced with sun-dried lime; loobia polo, diced beef and green beans; khoresht fesenjan, chicken breast simmered in ground walnut bathed in a sweet-and-sour pomegranate sauce; and khoresht karafs, beef with celery.

Basmati rice figures prominently in these and just about every other dish at Salar, including a slew of chicken-based options that also can be served vegetarian: addas, seasoned lentils; bahgali, lima beans and dill weed; albaloo, pitted sweet-and-sour cherries; zereshk, sweet-and-sour barberries; and shirin polo, nuts and berries.

The main attraction of Salar’s menu, however, are the kabobs: charcoal-grilled for a headily scented exterior and moist interior. Kabobs come in every category: vegetarian, poultry, seafood, lamb, beef and combinations thereof.

These are not your backyard-barbecue kabobs, unless you are in the habit of skewering thick chunks of salmon with onions and assorted peppers. It is astonishing to taste what marinade can do to beef tenderloin (barg) or shrimp or ground sirloin (kubideh).

My favorite, however, is joojeh, the Cornish hen kabob. The tiny bird is cut into eight even tinier pieces and positively revels in its tantalizing yogurt marinade. Salar is the only restaurant where I have ever encountered this, and it alone makes a meal here worth the visit.??