Dining Out: Cafe Tehran's well-made, generously portioned dishes are worth discovering

The Persian restaurant opened two months ago on Rideau Street, where one Korean restaurant and later another had been.

Published Sep 14, 2023 • Last updated 2 hours ago • 4 minute read

Shishlik lamb chop platter at Cafe Tehran Photo by Peter Hum /POSTMEDIA

Cafe Tehran

470 Rideau St., 613-860-8000, cafetehran.ca
Open: Tuesday to Thursday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., closed Monday
Prices: Starters up to $9.50, mains $20.50 to $45.50
Access: Steps to front door, washrooms downstairs

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About a month ago, I received a reader’s email with the succinct subject line: “Spices.”

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The reader, who wanted her name withheld, wrote: “I wish you would write your reviews for ordinary people like myself. I arrived in Toronto in 1965. Foods were non-spicy back then and I wish we could have those days back!!!

“I have lived in four countries and don’t know what would make anyone want to make food inedible because, if you can’t taste the food, what is the point of serving it?” she wrote. “It’s just a waste of good food, and that’s a crime.”

Allow me to go out on a limb and guess that this reader’s gripe is above all with dishes laced with chile peppers in some form. If I’m right, I can bunch that email with one that I received months earlier. In that message, the reader wrote, more specifically: “I enjoy Asian and East Indian food, but rarely can eat many of the dishes. I have a bad reaction to almost all strong peppers, unfortunately. Even small amounts of any hot peppers, including dried spices, are off-limits for me.”

That reader asked for more reviews of eateries “with dishes that aren’t spicy.”

To both of those readers, and to you, I’ll suggest a restaurant where I’ve dined twice in the last week — Cafe Tehran on Rideau Street.

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It is, unsurprisingly, a Persian restaurant, just two months old, and during one of my visits, it seemed to have attracted more than a few Iranian expats.

Cafe Tehran doesn’t serve “beautiful roast beef,” which my first reader fondly recalled. Nor does it have a “European-type menu,” which my second reader requested. But I’ll suggest, with respect, that chef-owner Ali Sadeghi’s well-made, generously portioned food, which was mildly but distinctively spiced in my books, is worth discovering, and not just by those Iranian expats.

Cafe Tehran took over a space that once housed Korean Garden and later Gogiya Korean BBQ House (both serving food that was undoubtedly hotter and more brusque than Sadeghi’s). The dining room, which seats about 40, has been renovated to be clean, spacious and abnormally bright.

The cafe’s menu gives pride of place to kebabs, and we tried a “trio” sampler of skewered meats ($45.50). Best were cubes of juicy chicken breast, bolstered by the unmistakeable, complex and earthy flavour of saffron, much loved in Persian cuisine. Chunks of grilled beef (called chenjeh) and skewers of ground beef (koobideh) were almost as good. All of the meats had been expertly grilled, and like other main courses, the dish included a heap of fluffy rice, some of which was saffron-tinged, and a minimum of vegetable accompaniments, either grilled or pickled.

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Also on that platter was a small serving of tahdig, a darkly crusted, crispy lozenge of saffron-y rice. While I’ve read of tahdig as a staple of Persian cuisine, I don’t think that I’ve encountered it previously at the Persian restaurants in Ottawa that I’ve tried over the years.

We were famished at that meal, and we also split a lamb shank platter ($29.50), in which the meat was fall-off-the-bone tender following a long braise. Some of the braising liquid accompanied the shank, as did a head of garlic that we guessed had been in the same pot.

Lamb shank platter at Cafe Tehran on Rideau Street. Photo by Peter Hum /POSTMEDIA

My guess is that the lamb shank was seasoned just as many Persian palates like. For my part, I added some salt that was in a shaker on the table, along with pepper and sumac, which would have added some citrusy sourness. (Persian fare, as I understand, leans into sourness, tartness and brightness.)

On my second visit, we wanted to try some of the cafe’s starters.

Kashk-bademjoon and mirza ghasemi at Cafe Tehran on Rideau Street. Photo by Peter Hum /POSTMEDIA

Two dips, while both made with eggplant, were starkly different. Mirza ghasemi ($9.50) made with grilled eggplant, garlic and tomatoes and topped with a fried egg, was deliciously savoury and smoky. Kashk-bademjoon ($9.50) presented eggplant in a rich, creamier, tangier, setting, with fried onions as a topping.

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A bowl of thick barley soup ($8.50), laced with shreds of chicken breast was wonderfully homey.

Barley soup at Cafe Tehran Photo by Peter Hum /POSTMEDIA

We still had room for shashlik — a platter of six lamb chops ($44.50), enhanced by their marinade and still tender after their time on the grill, served with more rice than we could eat on the spot.

Shishlik lamb chop platter at Cafe Tehran Photo by Peter Hum /POSTMEDIA

We finished our meal with a large cocktail glass filled with house-made Persian ice cream ($9), which is to say sweetly saffron-flavoured and garnished with slivers of pistachio. That treat was better than the piece of baklava ($3), which was not made on-site.

Saffron ice cream at Cafe Tehran Photo by Peter Hum /POSTMEDIA

The restaurant is not licensed. Servers were polite, kind and even eager to please.

While I’ve framed Cafe Tehran as a destination for the spice-averse, it’s not simply that. Wherever you sit on the pros and cons of spices, you can appreciate Sadeghi’s food as the work of a chef who cares about representing his homeland’s cuisine proudly, with properly grilled kebabs, ample servings and perhaps new but accessible flavours.

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