THIS TIME, I'M NOT 'SHAYAN' AWAY FROM PERSIAN FOOD

Persian food, anyone? It's not the first thing that comes to mind when I feel like eating out, but I like trying things, and this particular fare deserved my attention. After all, I've been living in Dubai for almost eight years, and it's just not right to ignore it, especially when a lot of people are raving about it.

My first encounter with Iranian food was made possible by Shayan, a restaurant at Rayhaan by Rotana, a hotel attached to the newly renovated Al Ghurair Centre.  It's a spacious, amply lit and extremely classy inside, but with a staff greeting you at the door and leading you to a table of your choice, it's not intimidating at all.

After handing me the menu, the smiling server didn't leave my table. He had expected to be barraged by a number of questions, mostly about what the dishes were and what they consisted of. And that's exactly what I did. And I must say, I was extremely impressed by their knowledge of every single item on the menu. 

The servers at Shayan are extremely friendly and knowledgeable, but not intrusive.

First off, the appetizers. Shayan does fabulously presented yet fresh and uncomplicated starters. Their Salad Shirazi looks like it's been tossed and plated straight from a vegetable garden - cucumbers, red onions, and tomatoes drizzled with virgin olive oil and lime juice. 

These fresh veggies, olives and bread are part of the appetizer round.

It took a few spoonfuls of the Kashk E Bademjan to convince me that the flavors in the dish actually worked together. It's special aged cheese curd mixed with grilled eggplant and seasoned with traditional Persian spices. I'm a big dairy consumer, but eggplants aren't my thing. But the spices actually do a great job marrying those two ingredients. A nice mix of of salty, spicy and savory.

The Esfenaj Nargesi - or seasoned spinach, topped with sauteed onions and fried egg - rests on a dainty plate, a perfectly sized portion. These are simple food items that I didn't realize made perfect sense when combined. It could even work as breakfast. 

Let's get to the good part. The mains were pretty straightforward. I first delved my spoon into the  Gheymeh Bademjan. It's in no way near "gamy" (Gheymeh, get it?). It's a lamb stew prepared with lentils, tomatoes and fired eggplant. It's something, I imagine, that an Iranian mother would make for her family of eight when there's a special occasion. It's comfort meets festive. Never mind my loathing for eggplant (which I guess is Bademjan in Farsi). The rest of the dish was something I would have over and over again at Shayan. 

A plateful of grilled goodness.

Then there came the enormous plate full of delectable grill items. Let's talk about the first one, called Kubideh Ye Joojeh. It's basically minced chicken breast, onion and saffron on a skewer. It's moist, tasty and healthy. That's a dinner dish I can get on board with. 

I sampled another chicken skewer called Joojeh Kabab Ba Ostokan (won't try to say it twice). It's chicken on the bone marinated with saffron sauce. It's tender, richer and densely packed with the sauce. The bits of chicken come apart! 

I then focused my attention on the beef. Tikke Masti is beef tenderloin marinated with yogurt, saffron and Persian spices. At this point, my taste buds were dominated by saffron. That wasn't a complaint at all. I thought it was good that saffron was one of the common elements in some of the dishes, because it was subtle yet undeniably essential in making the dishes achieve a certain flavor profile.  Tikke Masti isn't massively different from Arabic kebab, but in a way, it's distinctly Persian.

Three different kinds of rice served with the mains

Now I'm no fan of lamb. Some of the lamb kebabs I've had in the past tasted too gamy, over seasoned and oily beyond necessity. But Shayan's Kabab Shishlik was neither of those things. It was as fragrant as a good piece of lamb could get, grilled to perfection and seasoned to my liking. It's the kind of grub you'd have with lots of greens and grilled tomatoes.

The single weird thing I tasted that evening was the Tahchin Ghoosh Mahi. It's basically a savory rice cake flavored with saffron and layered with shrimp, fish and other seafood, topped with sea scallops, barberries and pistachios. Yes, it tastes as strange as it sounds. I was told that many patrons of the restaurant order it. I'm guessing they're all Iranian. I guess it's a really authentic and unique Persian flavor. It's one of those things: one of the Filipino dishes that everyone in my country loves is kare-kare, which is made with peanut butter, veggies and tripe. So this dish is something like that. Not a fan.

Room for dessert? Anytime. I sometimes think I eat a whole meal just to get to the much awaited dessert round. And my meal at Shayan is not exception. I was served traditional Persian ice cream, flavored with saffron and rosewater, adorned with vermicelli. There were many textures in this ice cream. At first I thought it was going to taste like kulfi, but it was sweeter than kulfi, but not as rich as mainstream ice cream, for example. The rosewater put me off, but the string of hardened caramel in the cup kept me going. I finished about 3/4 of my cup.

Trivia: Wikipedia says ice cream originated in Iran. Yup. Here's what it says:

In the Persian Empire, people would pour grape-juice concentrate over snow, in a bowl, and eat this as a treat. This was done primarily when the weather was hot, using snow saved in the cool-keeping underground chambers known as "yakhchal", or taken from snowfall that remained at the top of mountains by the summer capital — Hagmatana, Ecbatana or Hamedan of today. In 400 BC, the Persians went further and invented a special chilled food, made of rose water and vermicelli, which was served to royalty during summers.^[5] The ice was mixed with saffron, fruits, and various other flavours.

All in all, my Shayan experience left me bloated and happy, feeling like I knew more about the world than before I walked into the place. Lots of hits, a few misses. Contrary to my preconceived notion that Persian cuisine was similar to Arabic, it's actually unique. It's less intense but equally delicious. It's rustic in the way it is prepared and presented but complex flavor-wise. And of course, it's been around for centuries, which makes it a piece of ancient Persian culture. That's pretty cool.