Now Closed after a fire.
Have not tried the successor
I had noticed this re-incarnation restaurant in the run of shops nearby Argos in North Finchley. I had never seen it at night, but it looked smartly set out but deserted.
Fortunately they left copies of the menu outside, and it looked sufficiently interesting and moderately priced to be worth a try. In the light of being let down by others, my wife and I went there last Friday night (a better test than going on a Saturday).
North Finchley seems to have become a focus of Iranian ex-pats with grocery shops, restaurants, tea shops and a cultural center. A big Persian Restaurant a few hundred yards away had closed with no signs of life. It had to be worth a try.
When I booked, I saw I was the only name in the book, and was invited to choose where I wanted to sit. There is a completely European main area, but once you go out to the back, you are in Shisha land. Passing through an area of booths for relaxed smoking, you go out to the back, where you are somewhere that is not the UK. It has the look of the middle east with wall carpets, ornate lights and strange statues. This looked like fun.
When we got there at 8pm on a Friday, I was a bit worried that the back area we had booked might turn out to be a full blown passive shisha experience. Knowing that one pipe is the equivalent of about 90 cigarettes, I needed some assurance that this was not going to be a respiratory experience. They said no problem, and as the top was essentially open (presumably to comply with laws about smoking in restaurants), we took our seat.
The menu is fairly short, and you can have vegetarian dishes, lamb or chicken with some fish available. Our Romanian waitress confused us about what could be had on the mixed starter (only some of the cold ones, and some of them won't fit on the plate), so we plumped for individual starters to share.
This is served with a large lavash bread. The portions were huge, and extremely tasty. The Kashke is a little on the oily side. The taste was the taste of the east, and you immediately felt that you were in a very foreign place. If this had been not in the UK, it would have not been a surprise, and it was like being on holiday.
The drink list is a bit short, and I suspect that it is largely aimed at non-alcohol drinking ex pats.
There was red or white wine, and three types of bottled beer. We both went for Corona (a strange choice for the nationality of the restaurant, but I dare say there is not much Iranian beer around).
For main course I opted for the Chello Kebab Sultani which is one skewer of baby lamb fillet, one skewer of minced baby lamb served with grilled tomato. My wife opted for Bakhtiari which is a mix of chicken and lamb kebab.
This had definitely been freshly cooked but only scored an 8 on the CHOF scale. Service is a little slow, but amiable.
The meat was very tender, and there was a mountain of rice with a little packet of butter.
We could not work out what they had done to the lamb fillets, but not only were they very tender, but also had a marinated taste of the east. This was excellent, and together with the two starters made for a big meal.
We did have a desert to share.
We had this tailor made for us, and it was a mix of ice cream and a rice based noodle with citrus sauce (and an umbrella on the top). A person from the next table seemed to know what this was, and assured us that it was an authentic choice. Very good indeed.
Whilst the service was a bit hit and miss, the experience was one of the best we have had for a long time as we felt that we had dined somewhere very out of the ordinary. The bill for the two courses, one desert and two beers came to just under £40.
When we left, the local ex pats had arrived and were sucking away on their pipes in a very convivial atmosphere. The front restaurant was deserted, giving a very misleading impression.
We loved this place, and we only hope that not only does it stay, but does not get spoiled by being too widely discovered. However, it needs the customers to survive, so this is the only significant review on the Web at the moment. The only other two review found on AllinLondon were very enthusiastic. I suspect that this is authentic food, and an atmosphere that might have been found in Iran before the revolution in the late 1970's.
(NOTE THAT SINCE WRITING, THE RESTAURANT SUCCUMBED TO A FIRE. IT HAS BEEN CLOSE FOR SOME TIME, BUT SHOWS SIGNS OF REOPENING0
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