Even though I've lived among Iranians all my life here in Los Angeles, my trip to Turkey made me think about my relationship to my culture in a whole host of new ways. Neighboring Iran, it's the closest I've ever been to my native country since I was a baby, and there were so many things that felt familiar, so many experiences that pulled me back to tiny moments from my childhood, which for the first time had context. Meanwhile, being around plenty of Iranians who were actually there from Iran, who didn't have have 'hyphen American' tacked on to their nationality, gave me a taste of how out-of-touch I am with Iran today. Then, two amazing conversations I had there in Persian, one with an Afghan who left his country for Turkey as a child, and one with a young Iranian guy who'd only been in Turkey a few months, had such a strong effect on me that I'm still trying to process exactly why, especially considering my own relationship with Iranian-Americans here at home has always been a little tenuous. All the while though, I wasn't in Iran, I was in Turkey, and as comfortable and familiar as it felt, there was the constant reminder that I was very much a foreigner in this land: Turkish is a language with which I'm completely unfamiliar.
Amid all this ruminating and cultural confusion, a trip to a restaurant in Westwood's 'Tehrangeles' quarter called
Cafe Glacé -- a phrase that fills me with nostalgia -- that serves something called Persian pizza -- a concept I didn't know existed -- fits right in. I've waxed sentimental about Persian cuisine (
all over this blog, for one thing) for ages. But what I know of it is what came with us to the United States over 30 years ago: the food cooked at home, the traditional dishes of rice, heady spices, tangy fruits, and grilled meats passed down from mother to daughter in humble family kitchens.
Friends, there is a major gap in my knowledge of Iranian cuisine. I'm behind the times.
How could I possibly know about modern Iranian street food? Evidently, pizza places are a common occurence in cities like Tehran and especially Shiraz. And, like in the United States, pizza in Iran has taken on an identity of its own, a far cry from its Italian roots. (Side note: why does everyone appropriate -- and bastardize -- Italian food? I had "spaghetti" in Tokyo that was dressed with corn, octopus, cream sauce, and seaweed. All in one dish. Wha? Side note to side note: The fork-twirling skills of the clientele at said Tokyo spaghetti joint, accustomed to eating with chopsticks, put me to serious shame.)
The pizza I tried tonight had no sauce. It was personal-sized, on a thin but soft and substantial crust. The toppings, pretty much chosen for me, included chopped green peppers and tomatoes, thin slices of mushroom, and meat in the form of chopped
kalbas and discs of
saucise (baloney and hot dog, respectively), and were packed in to the very edges of the crust. All of this was topped with a layer of cheese, then browned fast and at high temperature, resulting in vegetables that stayed bright and just barely cooked under a puffy layer of crisp browned cheese. Evidently the Tehran cool kids squirt these guys generously with ketchup and ranch dressing -- bizarre to me, but I must admit, it works. Persian pizza is not the high cuisine of the
shahs, but you know what? It's really satisfying.
What else are the cool kids in Iran eating these days? Well, if the menu at Cafe Glacé is any indication, they enjoy
chips o paneer, potato chips topped with melted mozzarella cheese (and more ketchup and ranch, obvs); and
carrot juice floats, two scoops of vanilla ice cream in a tall glass with carrot juice poured over. Freshly squeezed juices, along with a handful of French-bread sandwiches -- hot dog,
salad olivieh (a mayonnaise-laden salad of chicken, potatoes, and pickles), and
kotlet (fried patties of ground meat and potatoes) -- round out the list, along with the namesake dessert: a float of ice cream in a tall glass of milky iced coffee, walking the line between milkshake and
affogato.
I really wanted to try the bizarro carrot juice and ice cream combo, but the heavy entrees left room only for tea and a shared
zoulbia. We sipped and took in the scene all around us: tables of young Iranians -- some with veils, some with dreads -- collectively burning their tongues on sizzling-hot cheese and commenting cattily on the cosmetic surgery choices of every hot new JLo-esque Persian pop starlet crooning in highly produced music videos on the flatscreen behind the counter. As soon as I got into my car, I put on my favorite Persian pop, too.
Shahram Shabpareh's Diyar, Persian pop circa 1980.
--
Cafe Glacé is at 1441 Westwood Blvd., about 5 blocks south of Wilshire.
The Los Angeles Times writes about Cafe Glacé
Actually, if you were trying to do that, you wouldn't really make these; you'd only just wear lots of black and kiss on both cheeks. But see, I've decided that zoulbia, a crisp lacy fritter that bursts with rosewater cardamom syrup when you bite into it, is going to be the traditional Iranian Hanukkah food from now on. It makes sense: throughout the Middle East and the Mediterranean, Jews eat various fried sweets to celebrate the oil-related miracle that Hanukkah commemorates (and yes, latkes weave this same theme through Eastern Europe). These little bits of deliciousness really should be our contribution to the grease-fest.
So, I wrote an article for the Shofar, an Iranian Jewish quarterly magazine, declaring this new tradition and offering my mom's recipe. You can check it out on page 67 of this pdf version of the issue, in addition to two other stories I wrote for the magazine: an opinion piece on Barack Obama being elected president (that's right, I wrote about politics. Crazy, no?) on page 51, and an article about the shameful scandal surrounding Agriprocessors, the nation's largest producer of kosher meat on page 58.
