Monday, January 21, 2019

Middle Eastern Delights: Persian Hot Spot Sofreh

A Taste of Cherry cocktail
If you like lots of herbs and seasoning - in your cocktails and food - Sofreh is for you. The always packed restaurant has delicious vegetarian and meat dishes, and interesting cocktails to accompany. 

Tahdig, the crunchy rice scraped from the bottom of the pan

Where to start

Share one of the fabulous dips: eggplant with mint, yogurt with shallots or feta with tons of herbs. They all come with warm, house made seeded bread. 

The recently departed beet salad
We had a new dish recently, grilled cauliflower with pickled vegetables and pistachios. Yummy. The beet salad is no longer on the menu, but if it returns, grab it.

Grilled cauliflower with pickled vegetables 
The vegan Zershk sour
You’ll want Tahdig, the crunchy bits of rice scraped from the bottom of the pan. There’s usually a chicken sauce over it, but we leave it off. Warning: this dish runs out by the end of the night. There are also rice dishes to accompany your main course, with saffron, or a new one with carrots.

Get a salad or two: pomegranate and feta, or the new tahini and date. The herb and noodle stew, listed with the salads can be your entree. It has lentils, onions, mint and tons of flavor. The only one we weren't cray about is the Shiraz salad, maybe because the cucumber, tomato and onion salad was too familiar. I like the surprise of all the unusual flavors at Sofreh.

Smoked eggplant entree
Meat eaters rave about the chicken with plum and barberries and duck with a rich walnut pomegranate sauce. 

Vegetarian options abound

I love the smoked eggplant with poached eggs and more of that great bread. There’s also fish with tamarind sauce and fenugreek and a new butter bean and dill dish. 

The Vesper martini: vodka, gin, saffron and rose petals

Persian Cocktails

The Zereshk sour has bourbon, beet, and aquafaba (chickpea water instead of an egg white. So it's vegan!)  The martini variations include a Vesper with saffron and Hendricks with mint and cucumber. All fantastic. A new 'Taste of Cherry' has Old Tom gin and sour cherry syrup. Yummy. 

Desserts

Desserts so far are not for chocolate lovers. The saffron rice pudding and rosewater sorbet are fine but I’ll hold out for chocolate.

No comments:

Post a Comment