Dani Valent gains an informal, intimate insight into Iranian home cooking in a low-key shopping strip.
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Plenty of great home cooks are urged to open restaurants. Ramesh Dianat wasn’t one of them. In fact, a few weeks before she launched the Persian food business that has become the curious and charming Kitchen 55 restaurant, she announced to her family that she was giving up cooking altogether. “I’m done; I’m sick of it,” she told her son, Khash Kohan.
It was 2021, the family was in lockdown, everyone was a bit stressed, and Dianat had her job in environmental policy to go on with anyway. But two weeks later, the kitchen was a-clatter. There were bags of rice everywhere. Containers piled up in the lounge room. Khash saw his mum taking photos of her dishes. Then she asked him to help her come up with a business name. Was she building a website while everyone else watched TV? Change was afoot.
Kitchen 55 (the name references Dianat’s age at the time) launched as a home-based, meal-delivery business. When the family wanted their lounge room back, they decided to take over a local fish-and-chip shop which had closed its doors. Most of the way through the year-long de-griming and renovation, Kitchen 55 was going to be takeaway only. Then … maybe just one table? Or two or three? Slowly, almost accidentally, the family opened a small restaurant last July.
I mean this in a nice way, but there are some deeply unprofessional aspects to the experience. The menu structure is, frankly, odd; I’ve never seen anything like it. But when you dig into the reasoning, it makes complete sense and I don’t think they could run the restaurant any other way.
There are no staff, just family, and this food is labour-intensive, taking ages to bubble away. They’re mum meals, not restaurant classics. So they’ve devised a three-week, rotating menu with two different dishes available each weekday. Saturdays are a little more lavish, with four items from Gilan, in Iran’s north.
It’s probably easiest to think of it as going to someone’s home for dinner: they cook, you eat. Even better, you can rely on any day’s offering to be delicious and satisfying and, unless you’re used to eating in Iranian homes, new to you, too.
It’s that unfamiliarity that prompts the second, sweetly amateurish element of Kitchen 55: we were continually warned that we might not like the food. “Do you want to send it back?” No, definitely not, we’re in rapture.
There are a couple of extras Dianat will always make. Her mirza ghasemi ($21) is a loose tangle of soft, smoky eggplant and lightly whisked egg, a little tomatoey, gently oil-slicked and salty. It’s a popular breakfast in northern Iran but, honestly, there’s no wrong time to eat something so beguilingly tasty. Scoop it up with lavash, a dimpled flatbread.
Also always available – unless she runs out, which she might – is zeytoon parvardeh ($10.50), a chunky dip of whole green olives, walnuts and pomegranate molasses, laced with garlic and the profusion of herbs that’s characteristic of Persian cooking. Like everything I tried here, it has big flavours but they’re deftly balanced, resolving in compelling and delightful synergy.
Dianat’s parents are from Rasht, the capital of Gilan, renowned for its subtle, detailed, slow-cooked cuisine and fierce hospitality. If you go to Kitchen 55 on a Saturday for the “sofreye Gilani” (northern spread), you may be served anar bij ($27.50), beef meatballs bathed in a herb-rich sauce that also features walnut and pomegranate.
It’s probably
easiest to think
of Kitchen 55
as going to
someone’s home
for dinner: they
cook, you eat.
Also on the roster is baghali ghatogh ($27.50), a vegetarian white-bean stew, strewn with dill and served with a whole, soft egg for smooshing through. It looks unassuming, merely hearty and healthy, but it’s transfixing, finding unmatched depth in simple ingredients.
Everything is served with katte rice, cooked on the stove until the bottom crisps to form the golden crust known as tahdig. It’s flipped to serve and is a wonderful, toasty accompaniment.
Even if you can’t fit in dessert, take home some impossibly buttery shirini kishmishi (sultana cookies; $5.50) and rosewater-fragrant shole zard (saffron rice pudding; $8) so you can have a taste of Iran via Templestowe in the morning.
There’s plenty to ponder. Templestowe is a lovely, leafy place to live, but I wouldn’t have considered it a gourmet destination. Kitchen 55 forces a rethink. A humble restaurant in a low-key shopping strip, it’s also one of the most exciting hospitality experiences I’ve had in ages.
Ramesh Dianat, I’m so happy you lifted your cooking ban.
The low-down
Vibe: An informal, intimate insight into Iranian home cooking
Go-to dish: Katte rice (served with Saturday’s main meals)
Drinks: The restaurant is awaiting a liquor licence. Meantime, there’s aromatic black tea and doogh, a fizzy yoghurt drink
Cost: About $75 for two, excluding drinks
This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine
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