Supper club is a party in progress

When I called Darband Grill and Bar, a man’s voice, rising over the party clamor at the other end of the line, asked, “Do you want the music room or the quiet room?”

I hesitated. “Never mind,” he replied. “Just come on over, we’ll be waiting for you.”

And so they were. A young woman greeted us as warmly as if we were visiting her home and seated us in the “quiet” room, with its marble fireplace and cut velvet banquettes.

Darband takes its name from a wooded suburb of Tehran often called the Bel-Air of Iran. This Darband is in Tarzana’s burgeoning stretch of Persian restaurants, but even in a neighborhood already thick with competitors (Ventura Kabob, Arat Barbecue House, Orchid Grill, Shirin and the charming Green Cottage), its supper-club style is quickly making it the local Persian party scene.

The dim rooms of what used to be an Italian restaurant and jazz venue, Monteleone’s, now throb with the soulful tones of Middle Eastern pop. A shimmery light plays on the main room from a sort of glass-encased wall of water. Heightening the whole lavish look, a pristine slab of rose marble sits along the top of the burnished wood bar.

At some tables, young women and their dates are partying away; at others, whole families, with several generations (including a lot of little kids) sit together. Every so often, the synthesized Middle Eastern music gets people up onto a polished parquet dance floor that’s barely the size of a lavash. The manic energy of the room, particularly on weekends, can give the place the feel of a Persian wedding feast.

“Have you tried the lamb chops? They’re delicious,” our waiter advised. From nearby tables we could smell the intoxicating aromas of the usual Persian short orders of beef and lamb and chicken kebabs marinated in saffron and onion juice, served on fragrant basmati rice pilaf. But we wanted Persian home cooking: the dishes called “house stews” and daily specials on this menu. First, though, we started with a devastatingly rich appetizer, kashk-o-bademjan, a dip of roasted eggplant mixed with browned onion and deliciously tart kashk (reconstituted dried whey).

Eager to pack as many flavors as possible into a single meal, we ended up ordering way too much food. The oval entree platters held enough rice to sate several of my relatives. The staggering quantities served here may seem wasteful, but Iran’s hospitality customs dictate that the host must, if anything, serve too much. Only in this way can guests leave no doubt that they’re satisfied, by leaving some food on the plate.

We’d ordered two dishes that show off the Persian taste for stewing meat with fruit. Fesenjan, one of the glories of the Persian kitchen, gets its rich, winy, mole-like flavor from a sauce of concentrated pomegranate juice mixed with crushed walnuts. Albalu polo -- a pilaf studded with sour cherries -- is topped with a whole chicken breast, oven-braised until it’s falling apart.

Another Persian trademark is extravagant use of herbs. The pilaf sabzi polo, for instance, has so much parsley, cilantro and baby dill in it that the rice is olive green. It comes with a slab of moist grilled Lake Superior white fish, which is the best imaginable complement to this pilaf.

Darband offers a short list of vegetarian dishes, and it’s the one real disappointment here. The dishes are the same pilafs that are accompanied by meat in the rest of the menu, but served with a “vegetable kebab” of barely grilled onion and bell pepper chunks. This lackluster presentation is a mystery, given the 3,000 years of culinary expertise that have made Persian cuisine one of the most influential in Asia.

In case you have a shred of appetite remaining, Darband does serve dessert. The rose water ice cream, gelato-like and freckled with pistachios, isn’t as perfumed as it sounds. Faludeh, however, is wonderful. It’s a rose water and sour cherry sorbet, semi-frozen and slushy, with rice vermicelli mixed into it. I always imagine it has some distant connection to the tea drinks with tapioca balls that are currently the rage.

I’m not sure faludeh will be the next boba chai, but I can certainly tell you that Darband’s menu is a good advertisement for Persian cuisine. And its ambience is one of the west Valley’s biggest parties -- one that welcomes anyone to join the celebration. *

Darband Grill and Bar

Location: 19337 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana, (818) 654-9918.

Price: Appetizers, $3.95 to $4.95; entrees, $7.95 to $16.95; desserts, 95 cents to $3.95.

Best dishes: Albalu polo, sabzi polo, fesenjan, kashk-o-bademjan, faludeh.

Details: Open 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays, 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Wine and beer. Parking lot. All major cards.