A giant meatball is the gateway dish to L.A.’s best new Persian restaurant Azizam

It’s laborious to overlook the enormous meatball.

Anybody on their strategy to ordering on the counter inside Azizam, whereas passing by its patio alongside Sundown Boulevard in Silver Lake, may instinctively sweep their gaze over the tables already stuffed with Persian dishes. Colours parade on platters as if in competitors: pickled cauliflower radiating golden turmeric, pureed beets staining yogurt scorching pink, the painterly play of greens amongst dusky olives, sprinklings of dried mint over soup and bunches of parsley on an appetizer plate.

The kofteh Tabrizi, in contrast, is eye-catching solely for its stature: a stoic orb, simply bigger than a softball, lolling in a pool of ruddy sauce. Imposing but alluring, its development at first look appears to be like straightforwardly beefy, topped with dried barberries that shine like a handful of rubies in a caper film.

Lean in to make out shapes of grains and legumes and squiggly slivers of caramelized onions, and to glimpse flecks of herbs. The nearer you look, the extra you see.

This may apply to a lot on Azizam’s concise menu. It’s cooking simply loved at face worth. In its quiet precision, although — the engineered whoosh of fragrances, the yogurt’s particular thickness and tang, the flatbread’s yielding crackle — you may also sense that each recipe leads again to story.

The narrative begins when Cody Ma and Misha Sesar met final decade at a celebration.

Its host, who labored with Ma at Pine & Crane, launched them realizing that they every had mother and father who shared Iranian and Chinese language heritages. Neither Ma nor Sesar had met anybody earlier than with the identical background.

Sesar grew up in Orange County, surrounded by her father’s massive household, most of whom had immigrated from Tabriz, an historic middle of the Silk Highway commerce in northwestern Iran. Ma was raised in Omaha. In 1996 his mom opened a restaurant there, nonetheless in operation, known as Mediterranean Bistro. Her menu blends likable Levantine mezze (hummus, tabbouleh, baba ghannouj, stuffed grape leaves) with kebabs and different Persian-style recipes she’d discovered from her Tehrani mom.

Within the pandemic, with Ma sidelined from his restaurant job and Sesar from her profession as an artwork gallery director, they stuffed time by experimenting with Iranian delicacies. Sesar started baking the crisp-soft, sesame-speckled flatbread known as barbari that they often drove to Irvine to purchase. The 2 of them in contrast their household’s regional variations on thick sandwiches, and custardy desserts scented with cinnamon or rose water or saffron, and khoresht, generously spiced meat stews that modify to include every season’s vegetables and fruit.

By the next yr, in June 2021, the couple had determined to channel their endeavors right into a pop-up they known as Azizam, a time period of affection that interprets as “my pricey” in Farsi.

I used to be eager on Azizam instantly, notably for the winking use of the hashtag #notjustkebabs in its early social media posts. In 2019 I had enlightening conversations with Iranian American cookbook authors Andy Baraghani and Naz Deravian in regards to the disparate experiences between meals in Persian households and eating in Persian eating places.

Household settings usually contain dishes that may be exceptionally labor intensive (the mounds of chopped herbs, as one instance) or stews so nuanced and delicate they defy professional-kitchen standardization. Most restaurant menus, they agreed, are purposefully designed round crowd-pleasing, fire-kissed kebabs, creamy dips and snowdrifts of seasoned rice heaped on platters.

As a cellular operation, Ma and Sesar have been unusually nimble at blurring these traces. Kebabs might be great, and our metropolis with its Iranian group that numbers practically 140,000 residents, has loads of establishments dedicated to them. Domestically, it’s been far rarer exterior a house to style minted celery khoresht, a springtime tonic Ma and Sesar served with both saffron-marinated rooster or fried artichokes. Or to search out summery baked eggplant kuku (the Persian frittata prototype), which the pair sliced into wedges and dressed with roasted tomato, garlicky yogurt and basil. Or, when autumn would arrive, the consolation of their rooster braised in candy spices with butternut squash and plums.

Usually these dishes would arrive flanked with sides acquainted to restaurant-goers: dips like masto-o-moussir (yogurt stung with the distinct taste of dried wild shallots), the essential piles of rice and Shirazi salad stuffed with chunky-cut tomatoes and cucumbers.

After honing their culinary aesthetic for practically three years, Ma and Sesar gave Azizam a stationary residence in an area that appears practically constructed into the aspect of a hill. The patio feels someplace between a sunlit refuge and, in its furthest corners, a bunker. Its cosy casualness suits the no-reservations cafe environment — the restaurant is open for dinner and in addition lunch, an unlimited daytime achieve for Silver Lake — and the meals has sufficient visible magnificence to present the place character.

A mazeh plate units the tone handsomely. Halved walnuts, a dice of feta, a sq. of barbari and herbs for nibbling border the unfold, which is served with two decisions amongst a half-dozen chilly choices: olive taut with the tart-sweet style of pomegranate molasses, Shirazi salad, masto-o-moussir or one other meticulously textured yogurt variation, pickles or mirza ghasemi, an eggplant and tomato dip. I’m often in for all of the yogurts, with separate orders of salad and olives.

If I’d had one quibble with Azizam the pop-up, it’s that the occasional sandwiches Ma and Sesar assembled could possibly be unbalanced: heavy on the bread, meager on the fillings.

The difficulty has been resolved on the restaurant. They’ll seemingly change finally, however at present two knockouts vie for consideration. Kuku sabzi, a stunning egg-bound mulch of herbs and leeks, anchors a meatless stack of tomatoes, cucumbers and radish unfold with garlic yogurt. The opposite one layers kerchiefs of beef tongue (it tastes like pot roast) with tomatoes, yogurt and a brightening spray of recent herbs. Eastside followers of Attari Sandwich Store in Westwood, the place the meat tongue is a staple, is perhaps satisfying their cravings with a shorter commute.

Even because the climate warms, don’t overlook ash-e-jo, the hearty-sounding soup of grains (predominantly barley), spinach and beans with swirls of fermented whey and mint oil and fried onions as a ending garnish. I like the look on buddies’ faces at their first spoonful, mirroring my very own response: the disarming, melting lightness and the darting flavors, at turns pleasantly bitter and richly herbed.

An entree such because the turmeric-marinated rooster, braised to utter tenderness and served over rice, is one which each Sesar’s and Ma’s households prepare dinner practically identically.

The kofteh Tabrizi, which they included in a few of Azizam’s earliest menus and stays a marquee dish, extra displays their triumph as collaborators.

Amongst floor beef the combination additionally holds rice, cut up peas, dried tarragon and summery savory and freshly minced cilantro, parsley and chives. Ma’s grandmother taught him the strategy of tossing wads of the kofteh backwards and forwards between the palms to maintain the feel delicate and barely self-contained. The middle holds a secret: dried apricots, prunes, barberries and walnuts, within the model of Sesar’s household recipes.

They braise the kofteh within the oven (historically it’s achieved on the range) in a tomato-based sauce electrical with Persian dried lime for its distinct, alluring bitter notes. True to Ma’s classes, the sphere is so tender it falls aside with a prod of a fork, tumbling beneath its complexities and revealing its candy core.

It’s the centerpiece on practically each desk at Azizam, and its reputation has additional that means for Ma and Sesar.

Ma’s mom, Shohreh Ma, tried at first to incorporate it on her restaurant’s menu in Nebraska 30 years in the past. Kofteh is clearly laborious, and her clientele by no means fairly warmed to the dish, so she stopped making it, and she or he fearful that Ma and Sesar can be repeating her mistake of their efforts.

Studying that it’s a constant hit has been validating for the kitchen classes Shohreh and her household handed on to Ma, who says, “She’s all the time like, this can be a dream come true that you just’re ready to do that.”

For a proud mom, and for L.A.’s Persian eating tradition.