Nasrin Rejali, who earned a following with a series of pop-ups, has opened her own restaurant in midtown, serving traditional dishes from all over Iran.

By Hannah Goldfield 

The New Yorker

At dinner recently, an Iranian American friend taught me a term in Farsi: lebos polo khori, which means, essentially, “finest attire” but translates literally to “rice-eating clothes.” We should have been in black tie, considering how much rice was piled on the table in front of us at Nasrin’s Kitchen, a new Persian restaurant in midtown. Nasrin Rejali, an Iranian refugee who moved to Queens, by way of Turkey, in 2016, earned a following with a series of pop-ups—which served traditional dishes from all over her native country—before opening her own place last month.

Several of the plates we ordered came from a section of the menu entitled Chelo Khoresh, or stew with rice. The khoresh-e ghormeh sabzi, a forest-green stew made with tender chunks of beef, fat kidney beans, fried herbs, fenugreek, and sun-dried limes, arrived with a separate platter of rice, the top layer of grains tinged orange with saffron, a small square of crispy tahdig (bottom-of-the-pot rice) as garnish. For a dish called zereshk polo ba morgh, the rice dominated: you could barely see the chicken legs, braised in saffron and tomato, buried beneath basmati adorned with tart barberries, glistening like rubies, shards of pistachio, slivers of almond, saffron oil, and more tahdig.

Rice—along with grilled peppers and tomatoes, raw red onion, and fresh basil—also accompanied the menu’s kebabs: koobideh, made with a combination of ground lamb and beef, and juicy chunks of boneless chicken, marinated in saffron and lemon juice. Rice was wonderful mixed with Rejali’s yogurt dips: the thicker, more sour mast mosir, made with Persian shallots and nigella seeds, and the sweeter mast khiar, with cucumber, raisins, sunflower seeds, dried mint, and dried rose petals. For Rejali’s superlative dolmeh barg mo, which she makes according to her mother’s recipe, rice was wrapped—with yellow split peas, barberries, tarragon, basil, cilantro, and onion—in silky grape leaves, simmered in pomegranate molasses, and served warm >>>