Roasted eggplant dip.
Click here for my Metro News review or keep reading below for the expanded version.
For exceptional service and exotic food, visit the family-owned Shiraz Persian Cuisine.
We went to Shiraz Persian Cuisine for lunch and were served promptly even though there is no lunch-specific menu. Both times that I’ve dined there, the owners dropped by to greet and chat with the table (and btw, I am an anonymous reviewer so I don’t receive preferential treatment).
My friend and I started with kashk-e-bademjan, a roasted eggplant dip with kashk (whey) with roasted garlic, fried onions, and mint, served warm with pita ($6.99). It’s very similar in style to baba ghanoush but the fermented whey adds a sour, nutty note.
This Persian roasted eggplant dip still makes me drool.
We shared a chef’s special platter for two. It included basmati rice, grilled tomato and onion, and three kinds of simply succulent kabobs (veal, chicken breast and ground beef) already taken off the skewer ($34.99). The saffron chicken was juicy and pitch perfect and my favourite out of the meats, even though it was all great, if a bit too meat-heavy overall.
Perfectly cooked ground tenderloin beef with salt and pepper, veal with lemon and saffron chicken.
The grilled onions were quite raw so I wouldn’t recommend eating them at lunchtime unless you,
a) bring a toothbrush to work,
b) enjoy onion-breath, or,
c) will be spending the rest of your day with your lunch companions who have also mowed down on onions.
Shiraz also offers Persian stews, vegetarian dishes, individual platters and children’s plates. For drinks, there is the authentic carbonated sour yogurt (try a sample first before you attempt to order a pitcher of the stuff; it’s not for everyone). Or stick to Persian tea which comes with free refills.
For dessert, we shared a cup of deceptively refreshing Persian ice with vermicelli noodles and rosewater (faloudeh $5.99).
Noodles and ice make for a surprisingly refreshing and textured dessert.
The dessert is not on the menu, but that’s part of Shiraz’s charm–you feel like a confidant when they tell you about the off-menu items. My friend Chris calls the faloudeh, “clutch”–his term for a food item that he cannot stop thinking about and would return to a restaurant time and time again specifically to have.
I wish Shiraz Persian Cuisine featured lunch specials, but the food was so tasty and the service so unexpected, that I will forgive them for that while hoping that they come to this realization, soon.
The staff leaves diners feeling special, accommodated and most importantly, satiated.
Happy eating!
-Anh Chu
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If you’re food’s 15.99 advertise it as such. Don’t come back with a 18.99 bill and tell me it’s the new price because the economy’s bad.
I went to Shiraz today for lunch since it’s a block away from where I work. My plan was to go there all the time since I recently started working at my new job and love Persian food. However after my first experience today, the Vietnamese restaurant and the donair shop across the street are where I’m gonna go for lunch..
I ordered the chicken which was labelled as 15.99 on the menu. When the bill came back, it was 18.99. I asked for the menu and the server said he couldn’t give me a menu. I told him the price for the chicken was 15.99. He said he knows, but the economy’s bad and we have to charge 18.99. I paid the 18.99 but they lost a potential regular over two dollars. Expect them to go out of business before the end of the year.
That blew my mind. Who says that?
Class, get some.