What American wouldn’t scoff at the stereotype that as a nation we eat nothing but hamburgers? But peruse the menus of the handful of Persian restaurants around town and you might think the average Iranian diet revolves around kebabs, hummus, and baba ghanoush. Azim and Goly Nassiri-Masouleh aren’t saying there’s anything wrong with those foods, but most Iranians don’t eat them every day—if they eat them at all. “When I was in Iran I didn’t know hummus or baba ghanoush,” says Goly, who runs a day care center out of her home and speaks in a lilting singsong that must keep her young charges spellbound. At night she works the front of the (very small) house at Rogers Park’s Masouleh, where her husband, Azim, works the kitchen, laboring over regional dishes such as mirza ghasemi, roasted eggplant stewed with tomato and garlic.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
His studies were interrupted in the early 80s by the Iran-Iraq war—he needed documents from home to continue, and if he’d returned for them he would have been drafted into service. Goly had been living in France since 1976, when she landed a job at the Iranian embassy, but she was fired after the Islamic revolution, along with everyone else who’d come on board under the shah’s regime. She stayed in Paris, earned a computer science degree, and became friends and then roommates with Azim. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1986 and found work as a busboy at the now defunct Ash Manor restaurant at Diversey and Ashland. Two years later Goly got a green card and landed a programming job in San Jose. Azim followed her west and found work cooking in an Iranian restaurant. They married in 1990 and in ’94 returned to Chicago, where she started the day care and he got a job as a room-service waiter at the downtown Marriott.
The Nassiri-Masoulehs named the place after the tiny village high above the Caspian Sea where Azim’s parents were from (it also gave them their surname). The menu includes a triumvirate of three classic Iranian khoureshte, or stews: vegetable beef with green herbs (ghormeh sabzi), eggplant, beef, and yellow split peas (gheimeh bademjan), and chicken in a thick walnut-pomegranate sauce (fesenjan). It also features dishes native to Gilan, the northern province where both the village of Masouleh and Azim’s hometown of Rasht are located.
But Azim drew the line at hummus and baba ghanoush. Instead he’s gradually working toward offering other rare northern dishes as specials. Gilan is also known for its sturgeon and caviar from the Caspian, and he’s promised friends he’ll attempt an American interpretation of polo kebab, skewered fish accompanied by walnuts, fava beans, rice, and a side of salt-preserved caviar. Azim holds no hope of finding the authentic ingredients, so he’s evaluating possible substitutions, including anchovies for the caviar and Lake Superior whitefish for the sturgeon. “I’m gonna do it one of these weekends,” he says. “I’m not gonna do it always.”v
6653 N. Clark, 773-262-2227
