RESTAURANT REVIEW : Shahrzad Is More Than Just Kebabs

Ihave a sneaking suspicion that the rise of Persian restaurants around here has something to do with the rise of yogurt in our diet, but I can’t prove it.

I do know that Ventura Boulevard is lined with frozen yogurt shops the way the Champs Elysees is lined with trees. I also know there has been a tremendous influx of Iranians to Los Angeles since the fall of the shah. Let’s hedge our bets and say the Persian restaurant boom is tied in with both these facts somehow.

Shahrzad started as a humble kebab restaurant in Westwood and today is a near-conglomerate with four branches. The Encino Shahrzad, nicknamed Bahar (spring), shows how far Iranian restaurants have come since the ‘80s. The dining room is stark and shapely, with modish, quasi-Scandinavian chairs and tables. The white postmodern ceiling is a jumble of sharp edges and mysterious corners that looks as if it had been designed for a disco.

What better dish to start a Persian dinner with than yogurt? Mast o mosir, an enormous bowl of plain yogurt and finely minced shallots, makes a pungent, highly digestible accompaniment for sheets of parchment-like Iranian bread rolled up with butter and/or various torshi, the Iranian pickles that the restaurant prepares.

Torshi are made from onion, garlic or chili peppers; Iranians happily eat them straight. They have a very sharp, vinegary quality, and I find them to be an acquired taste--or to be exact, a taste I haven’t acquired.

Hot appetizers in Persian restaurants are basically the Turkish appetizers familiar to most of us through Greek, Armenian and Arab restaurants. I found the hot appetizers here oily and painfully overcooked. Dolmeh are grape leaves with a delicious rice and meat filling, but they’re unattractively soggy.

“Eggplant delight” is a hot appetizer that actually is Iranian in origin, but Shahrzad’s is one of the few unappealing renditions of this dish--usually known as kashk o bademjan --I have ever run into. The puree of eggplant and garlic topped with thickened yogurt has a vaguely sour, tired taste instead of the sweetness and freshness that should make it a perfect snack or dip.

Among the entrees, there is a wide variety of Persian stews and house specialties, but as a Persian family at the next table informed me, most of the customers come for the kebabs. Apparently the grilled dishes are harder to make at home.

In any case, the kebabs here are mostly quite good, marinated in coriander, garlic and other fragrant things, then flame broiled and served on an outrageously large pile of rice. The best I tasted was the lamb kebab, weighing nearly a pound and tender as a baby’s cheek.

Soltani, the largest dish served, is a combination of kubideh (ground beef and chopped onion molded onto a skewer and served in one long piece) and barg (steak kebab that tastes heavily tenderized). Both meats are extremely well seasoned with garlic and coriander.

I didn’t get to the chicken kebab, but that was by design. The one at the next table came charred black.

The more curious diner may wish to sample some of the house specials. Proceed at your own risk in this restaurant. Their fesenjan, or pomegranate walnut chicken stew, was just awful, oily to the point of rancidity. That is a shame; the dish can be one of the true showpieces of a good Persian kitchen. Ghaimeh, yellow split peas cooked in a tomato saffron sauce, didn’t please me either. Like many dishes here, it was more sour than anything else, with little subtlety or dimension.

Only the albaloo polo, rice cooked with sour cherries, was as pleasing as I’d hoped. Oddly enough, the cherries weren’t as sour as they might have been.

You’d better like rose water if you plan on having dessert here; they have rather a heavy hand with it. Persian ice cream, for example, seems to be vanilla ice cream with a healthy snootful of it. There’s plenty more in the zolbia, a lattice-shaped fritter soaked with honey that resembles the Indian jilebi. The baklava, made with a mixture of walnut and pistachio, is truly overloaded with the stuff.

Finish up with Turkish coffee or dough (pronounced “doog”), which is a sort of yogurt-soda. It tastes like mineral water and plain yogurt shaken together, and no, I didn’t try it this time.

Why? Because I’m waiting until they serve it frozen.

Recommended dishes: mast o mosir, $2.50, lamb shish kebab, $10.95, barg sandwich, $9.95, baklava, $1.

Shahrzad, 17547 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 906-1616. Lunch and dinner, 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. daily. MasterCard , Visa and Diners Club. Beer and wine. Parking in lower lot. Dinner for two, food only, $25 to $40.