$85 for nine seasonal courses is a shockingly low price in the world of tasting menus that typically start at triple digits.
The ozonboron/sturgeon course at Maman Zari restaurant in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood is seen on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. There’s a constant sense of movement on the stretch of Kedzie Avenue that crosses the Brown Line tracks in the Albany Park neighborhood. It’s slow, but steady, and surprisingly dramatic. From too many drivers rushing to beat the gates, to families on foot pushing and pulling mountainous carts of all kinds.Quite frankly it shouldn’t work.
Take, for example, the mirza ghasemi and sabzi khordan. The course is actually a collection of dishes, with soft eggplant under a smoky dome, and a fine herb fluff.Traditional mirza ghasemi does have smoked eggplant, Shahsavarani said, but usually scrambled eggs too, which they omitted because they felt it muted the flavors.
It’s become something of a signature at the first fine-dining Persian tasting menu restaurant in the city with an unlikely origin story. “When we decided we wanted to open a restaurant, we wanted to make sure we could do something that was impactful,” Shahsavarani said. “We didn’t want to be another Persian restaurant in Chicago.”“As much as I love kebab, we didn’t need another restaurant that was kebab and rice in Chicago,” Shahsavarani said. “That was the inspiration behind doing a Persian tasting menu.”
Maman Zari died about a year and a half ago, said her granddaughter, before lending her name and silhouette to the restaurant.The chef offers three tasting menus: standard and vegetarian, which I had, and pescatarian, with dishes from the other menus. “People say I would lick the sauce off the plate,” Shahsavarani said laughing. “I don’t know what alchemy Matteo did, but the tomato saffron sauce on there, if that’s even what it is, is magical.”“I put beurre blanc, rosemary and a touch of tomato saffron sauce,” Lo Bianco said on his variation of the French white butter sauce.
On the vegetarian menu, three sweeter plates followed in succession. The stunning adas polo with a crisp cake of smoked basmati rice, date and raisin; a koofteh Tabrizi orb with chickpea, dried plum and caramelized onion; plus aloo esfenaj, a reimagined spinach and plum stew with a saffron tahdig cake on top.
The shirini/cookie course with tea service at Maman Zari restaurant in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood is seen on March 13, 2024. The buttery bite-size cake originally came from Shahsavarani, her only recipe on the menu.
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