Alborz Persian and Endy Chavez

Chef Pickle-nik has a potential client on the horizon. Since the client is Persian, Pickle thought it necessary to sample some excellent Persian food in Saint Plotniko. So last night, instead of staying home watching Game 7 Cardinals versus Mets, a baseball game in whose outcome The Great Plotnik would not have had much emotional attachment, he, The Great Ducknik and Chef Pickle-nik had dinner at Alborz Persian Restaurant on Van Ness and Sutter.

It's a big, stately place, with picture windows on two sides, a split-level dining room and a man who brings tea after dinner who has perhaps the worst toupee this side of Harry the Hat in New York's South Side Billiard Parlor.
But the food! First of all, let's just say the tadiq and fesenjan is one of the most delicious appetizers imaginable. You're looking at the fesenjan sauce on top, which is made from pomegranate juice and has a sweet-sour and slightly thick taste, while what you see in the middle that looks like a slice of ham, is not ham, but a thick crust of rice, which they scrape from the bottom of the huge roasting pans of many different rice dishes in the Persian repertoire, and place under the fesenjan sauce. More crispy rice is under the crust. This dish is to die.

The chicken kebab, marinated in lime and spices, was lovely to look at as well as munch on, but the star of this plate is the shirin polo, a yellow rice made with butter, almonds, pistachios and orange peel. Shirin Polo is to fall over quivering.
The rack of lamb was a bit gamey for all the tasters, but you've got to admit it looks spiffy on the plate. The rack of lamb is to fall out of a sixth floor building on your head.

Leaving the restaurant at 8PM, TGP got home in time to see this extraordinary catch by Endy Chavez, who leaped over the left field fence to prevent a home run. But, ho hum, the Metrosexuals lost. The Mets losing is to scrape your little finger on a lukewarm sponge. Yawn.