A Taste of Persia Is One Place You Must Try At The Grub Street Food Festival

A Taste of Persia’s Abgoosht Lamb Stew

I am so excited for the Grub Street Food Festival on Sunday! Sponsored by the Hester Street Fair and Grub Street, New York Magazine’s food blog, this is one of my favorite annual events, where we can try some of the most exciting, innovative and fabulously delicious food in the city.

Over 75 food purveyors will set up their tents on the school running track at Essex and Hester on the Lower East Side. Many, if not most, of these food entrepreneurs are currently participating in regular markets or got their start in a market at some point.

The talented and dedicated Chef Saeed Pourkay of A Taste of Persia NYC, will be serving his mouthwatering abgoosht, or lamb stew, and seasonal ash reshteh noodle soup. I met Saeed at the Union Square Holiday Market last year, and I feel so lucky that his small storefront is a block from my office.

I had never been exposed to Persian food to any extent before I met Saeed. Persian cuisine is wonderfully complex, with many mysterious spices and regional ingredients. Saeed will fill his kitchen with parsley, and by the time he is finished several hours later, it has become an aromatic, delectable dish, like ghormeh sabzi, a green herb stew. Cooking Persian food requires an extensive range of ingredients and a lot of time.

He makes traditional dishes like fesenjan, a sumptuous walnut, pomegranate and meat stew, and ghaymeh, or yellow split peas, fine Persian spices and beef. He made a salmon stew, ghalieh maahi, last week, which was rich yet subtle, comforting and not at all fishy.

Saeed has built up a devoted following. The best compliment of all is when his Persian customers tell him his food is better than their mothers or grandmothers dishes. I’m sure Mama and Grandma would not be too upset about that with Saeed doing all the cooking for them.

Look for Saeed and A Taste of Persia NYC at the Grub Street Food Festival. And let us know what else you eat by using #grubstreetfoodfestival on your favorite social media platforms of choice.

(Keep an eye out for Saeed’s upcoming Kickstarter campaign so that we can help him open a real restaurant!)

Grub Street Food Festival: