Shatter Abbas Serves Skewered Delights and a Slice of Iranian Life

Every day people ask me, “Where’s a fun Iranian restaurant?” Well, not every day; once in a while, maybe. Or maybe one time somebody asked me.

It’s a tough question, in any case. At the very least, Iranian restaurants tend to have an air of emigre melancholy, and in some you can feel a wave of defensiveness roll through whenever a non-Iranian walks through the door. Ordinarily, I don’t recommend going to an Iranian place for a carefree fiesta atmosphere.

But Shater Abbas in North Hollywood is a big exception. It is a fun place, in its way, something like an Iranian version of the Old Spaghetti Factory or Houlihan’s Old Place. It’s a self-conscious, faintly self-mocking nostalgia room, full of memorabilia of pre-revolutionary Iran. The walls are covered with writing: snatches of song lyrics, the old Tehran train schedule (with a couple of added destinations, such as Heaven and Hell), wise sayings. There are even things written on the blades of the ceiling fans.

And jokes, plenty of jokes. There’s a model of a hamburger with a deadpan note in calligraphy reading, “Attention: We do not make this.” There’s something that looks like a basketball with a sign declaring it to be a meatball, Made in USA. (A joke about how big things are in the New Country, you see.)

Well, this may not exactly have you rolling on the floor, particularly since all the jokes are in Farsi rather than English, but it is sort of inspiring to see Iranians able to make jokes at all, after one of the rockier emigre experiences in this country’s history.

Anyway, Shater Abbas packs them in at night for the live Iranian pop music (which comes on after 9 p.m.; reservations necessary). Nostalgic Iranians come in to smoke the water pipes kept on hand or to see--or show the children born in this country--a vast array, virtually a museum, of Iranian tools, household utensils and odd items. The latter include some of the big wooden clubs used as exercise weights in the traditional gymnasiums, where men once exercised to the chanting of the Persian national epic.

It seems to be a big success. And when I say success, I’m thinking of the spiffy white Rolls you sometimes see in the parking lot, the one with the license SHATER.

But I digress. The food. The food is largely the sort of thing you find on every Iranian restaurant menu, the reason being that Iran has always been a country of home cooks, without a highly developed restaurant tradition. Indeed, those who worked there in the early ‘70s have compared eating one’s way across Iran to eating one’s way across Nevada. Short orders such as shish kebab, the sort of thing that could be prepared by a sidewalk meat griller, naturally predominate in Iranian restaurants.

As a matter of fact, Shater Abbas has a bit of a novelty in this very department. It has not only the usual kebab of ground lamb, but one of ground chicken. Yes, ground chicken. Two whole skewers, which is what you get when you order the ground chicken kebab dinner, might get a little tedious about three-quarters of the way through, but anybody ordering the kebab combo plate might consider picking ground chicken as one of the kebabs.

Shater Abbas also has some elegant stewed dishes. One is abgoosht, one of the Iranian dishes that is served in two courses: a thick, meaty broth perfumed with dried lime peel and then a solid dish of the meat (plus some chickpeas) pounded to a tart paste. Another is kashke badenjan, a rather insignificant-sounding meatless item. In most Iranian restaurants kashke badenjan is eggplant topped with a rather insipid sour whey sauce and some dried herbs. Here, it is hauntingly flavored with sour pomegranate juice and topped with minced walnut.

The soup appetizer, ash, which changes daily, is a solid comfort food, the sort of thick, warming mixture of meat, spinach, chickpeas and red beans that you’d definitely like to have in you when the icy wind howls through the mountain passes and the caravan decides to hole up for the night.

The rest is the usual Iranian restaurant business: appetizers of various vegetables, mostly cooked, dressed with yogurt. Various vegetables (and also cherries) pickled in vinegar, very sharp indeed. Herbs and cheese to eat with bread. Extremely sweet pastries loaded with rosewater flavor, and a rosewater-flavored ice cream (said to be orchid on the menu, but I beg to differ).

This is it, this is the fun Iranian restaurant of the Valley. The humor may be a little hard to follow if you don’t read Farsi, but the food speaks its own international language.

Suggested dishes: ash, $2; kashke badenjan, $5.50; combination kebab, $9.50; bastani, $2.

Shater Abbas, 13130 Sherman Way, North Hollywood. (818) 765-6600. Open for lunch and dinner from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Full bar. Parking lot. MasterCard and Visa accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $19 to $30.