Middle East Market adds cafe, building on its role as Berkeley’s Persian hub

Hossein Razavi, the 68-year-old co-owner of Center East Cafe, greets clients graciously as they enter the restaurant on San Pablo Avenue, close to College Avenue. The cafe opened in July as an extension of the Center East Market, which has been central to Razavi’s life for nearly half a century.

Razavi had been an everyday on the market since he moved to Berkeley from his hometown of Yazd, Iran, in 1976 to attend San Jose State College.. At that second, The Center East Market was the one place the place Persian and Iranian immigrants might discover acquainted merchandise of residence, together with tea, spices, sweets and rice, and it turned a cultural and culinary middle for the Iranian neighborhood.

“I studied civil engineering like each different Persian within the Nineteen Seventies and Eighties,” he mentioned earlier than turning extra critical. “Then the revolution occurred in 1979 and my father died, so I had to return. I witnessed the revolution. I got here again right here in 1983 as a chicken with damaged wings and a damaged coronary heart.”

Unable to finish his training, he began driving taxis to earn a gradual earnings. He labored on the Pleasant Cab firm for over 20 years, saved sufficient to buy the corporate and loved connecting with folks from all walks of life. till Uber took a giant chunk out of the taxi business. His spouse, Madeline (a psychotherapist), not eager on a brand new route, properly recommended that he contemplate shopping for Center East Market and turning it into “one thing particular.” When he purchased the market in 2015, he made his then twenty-year-old son Amir co-owner with a watch to the long run. He renovated the inside of the market, which wanted a variety of work, and put in a kitchen within the again.

“My father has all the time cherished cooking for associates,” Amir mentioned. “After soccer matches, he would host gatherings of 20 to 50 associates at residence, cooking giant meals only for the pleasure of sharing meals and neighborhood. Whereas driving the taxi, he usually dreamed of opening his personal restaurant the place he might serve the standard Persian dishes he cherished: kebabs, stews and fragrant rice dishes.”

Conventional Persian delicacies is richly flavored with herbs and spices. The long-simmered stews, usually with an interaction of candy and bitter, are served with tender, fluffy rice.

Lots of the dishes on the cafe’s menu have been initially served at their makeshift counter on the entrance of the market and obtained rave evaluations from clients. The tables on the entrance of the shop have been all the time full, particularly after they have been featured on Examine, Please, Bay Space in Could 2019. When COVID hit, the couple pivoted to takeout and catering. The Razavis, who had all the time had their eye on the restaurant subsequent door, the previous El Patio, took the chance to purchase it earlier this 12 months and opened their restaurant in July, to share their dishes with a bigger viewers in a way more spacious atmosphere with a nice out of doors terrace.

The menu, which incorporates a number of vegetarian choices, contains highlights resembling koobideh, kabobs made with floor beef, lamb, grated onions and saffron, grilled on large, flat steel skewers, which supplies a moist texture, served in a lavash bread wrapper or on a mattress of tender rice. Fesenjan is a tempting mix of floor walnuts, pomegranate molasses and saffron. At Center East Cafe, the dish is slow-cooked each morning for 4 hours, making a spicy, barely candy and really satisfying sauce, scrumptious with chunks of tender hen. Often called Iran’s nationwide dish, ghormeh sabzi is an earthy, deeply flavored stew, incorporating seven totally different herbs, together with fenugreek, chives and parsley, plus pink beans, dried limes, onion and garlic in an intensely flavored sauce.

Different decisions embody falafel, lamb shank and eggplant. To the each day specials you may add salmon or lamb chops; cooking on the grill ensures that these meat dishes are juicy and the parts are beneficiant.

Facet dishes embody Shirazi salad, which is recent and crisp, with diced cucumbers, tomatoes, pink onions and mint in lemon juice and olive oil; salad Oliveah, a combination of egg salad, potato salad and hen salad, with Persian pickles, carrots and peas; taadig, the crispy rice on the backside of the pot, right here made on items of golden brown lavash bread; and maast moosir, thick yoghurt with shallots.

“Sprinkle it with sumac,” suggests Hossein, which is supplied in quite a few shakers across the restaurant. Sumac, Hossein advises, has quite a few well being advantages.

Like a giant daddy bear, Hossein warmly welcomes clients, together with those that have been coming earlier than he and Amir took over the market and now deliver their youngsters and grandchildren.

The pair obtained a liquor license after they took over the restaurant. Consistent with the give attention to Center Jap delicacies, their full bar options Teliani’s Georgian wines, Sarbast beer from Uzbekistan and Golden Arak Ramallah from the West Financial institution. 4 cocktails deftly mix spirits with traditional flavors: together with the Pomegranate Ember, which mixes vodka and ginger liqueur with pomegranate and lime juice, and the Persian margarita, which mixes tequila, hibiscus and agave, and a sumac-encrusted rim. Thematic mocktails with pomegranate juice or rosehip infusion are additionally out there.

The yard patio has been upgraded, with an overhead shade, crops added and a gurgling fountain. Plans are within the works for musical evenings on the terrace with native jazz artists or world music artists. (Examine their web site for particulars).

For dessert you may order a plate of varied baklava or Turkish delicacies. However a visit past the Center Jap market will reveal a multi-colored kaleidoscope of those sweets to select from, in flavors resembling pistachio, mulberry, kiwi, blueberry, mango-coconut, chocolate-hazelnut and rose petals with pomegranate.

When you’re on the market, try the dizzying array of foodstuffs from Iran, Turkey, Greece, Russia and lots of different international locations, together with a dozen forms of olive oil, jams from rose to carrot to quince, a wall of spices, a wide array of dried fruit, nuts and seeds and an array of recent breads. Their hottest bread, Sangak, is a four-foot-long flatbread sprinkled with sesame, poppy and flax seeds and baked on stones.

Positioned close to the intersection of College and San Pablo Avenue Berkeley’s most diverse neighborhoodfather and son take their dedication to “neighborhood, delicacies and tradition” (their motto) to coronary heart. The Razavis transport merchandise from 35 totally different international locations and prefer to have clients’ favourite dishes in inventory.

“It has been an extended journey,” Hossein mentioned, “however I am very comfortable the place I’m now.”