One of many Iranian restaurant owners to identify his food as “Persian” rather than “Iranian,” Farivar’s journey is both political and personal.
When the venerable James Beard House in New York City requested that Farivar, a Washington-based chef, cook a traditional Persian meal there to celebrate Nowruz, the Persian New Year, he knew he would need to tap into his sisters’ culinary expertise.
More than 30 years ago, at age 16, Farivar was dispatched from the family home in Urumiyeh when the Shah fell and has lived in the United States ever since. His training as a chef was largely in American cuisine. Fortunately, his two sisters moved to the United States before he did and began recreating the Persian dishes of their childhood shortly thereafter.
Sepideh Farivar moved to the United States years before the 1979 revolution. While their mother and maids had done most of the cooking in Iran, Sepideh was able to recreate the khoresht stews, the yogurt-based side dishes like mast o khiyar (yogurt and cucumbers), and the specialized saffron-scented rice.
It took Maziar 10 to 12 attempts to get his sisters’ approval of his saffron rice. Done correctly, the process involves washing the rice several times, boiling it, draining, and steaming it, and finally adding a bit of yellow saffron. Sepideh told The Washington Post that when the rice is served, “you should see the rice drop one [grain] at a time.”
Maziar, 50, developed his love of cooking while in college in San Francisco. He waited tables at a high-end restaurant where he learned “to keep the standards high no matter what you’re doing.” In 1991, he and his brother Shahab opened the Peacock CafÈ at a small corner of Prospect Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Washington, DC’s, Georetown neighborhood.
It wasn’t until the invitation to cook for the James Beard House that Maziar set to work educating himself and his largely Latino kitchen staff on how to recreate the various dishes. Working with intuition and his childhood memory of the aromas, Maziar and the team would work on a recipe until it carried just the right aroma.
They ultimately prepared a five-course meal that featured a beet-and-yogurt salad, a lamb stew with dried limes, and a trio of Persian desserts for the sold-out James Beard event in 2010. Maziar was invited again for this year’s Now Ruz.
After his success in New York City, Maziar brought some of his hometown dishes to the Peacock Cafe in Georgetown, which is one of Washington’s rare white-tablecloth Persian restaurants. He also hopes that his restaurant can counter some of the negative news coming from overseas. “Hopefully we can share some good news [about Iranian culture] after all the negativity.”