LDNReview
Included In
Being invited into someone’s home is a fairly regular occurrence. All you need are social skills and friends. Or, alternatively, a BT engineer’s uniform. Being invited into someone’s head is not a regular occurrence, unless you’re a shrink or a meditation podcast. But that is exactly what happens when you go to Tehran_Berlinr.
The head and home in question belongs to Yuma: chef, owner, and table-maker of this French and Persian influenced restaurant in Clerkenwell. We don’t often talk names because it doesn’t feel that relevant to your experience, but at Tehran_Berlin it is. Yuma will greet you, seat you at the marble table he built, before stepping back into the open kitchen to make and serve you lunch or dinner, leaving you to get comfortable in a plant-filled, jazz-playing, living room-like space where wine cabinets, artwork, and childhood pictures line the plaster walls. He’ll say goodbye to you when you leave. He’ll give you a bell to say you forgot your doggy bag. He is Remy the Rat, a Grand Designs applicant, and your parent all rolled into one. Everything here comes from him.
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
From Tuesday to Saturday Tehran_Berlin serves a five or seven course chef’s tasting menu, and it feels like the inner workings of this man’s head. The presentation of everything from the pink rack of lamb to the caramel tart is meticulous. Your warm and salted flatbread intake is measured (but you should ask for more). The amount of money you spend—£120 for the tasting menu, £160 fo the chef's table—is fixed. It gives you high points, like the saffron and mussel sauce that our firstborn will be baptised in, and it gives you so-so points, like the pistachio-covered oyster and its spoonful of cinnamon flashback.
Come Sunday, the menu changes. The tweezers are left in the kitchen drawer and instead a family-style Persian set menu—inspired by what what Yuma’s mother would cook for him—is served. Whether your childhood meals were ketchup-covered shepherd’s pies, or simmering pots of daal, or bizarre cuisine combos randomly assigned to a day of the week (note: Chirish Saturdays and Scotturkish Tuesdays are as fun as they sound), you’ll know that this is sacred stuff. Here it starts off with dips galore: smoky khask bademjoon, creamy mast-o-khiar topped with petals, coucou sabzi (a herb-packed frittata). If you’re not sure what it is, just try it. And then ask for some more bread again. Always more bread.
But don’t fill up, as you need room for the main event, the tahdig—a bowl-shaped portion of basmati rice layered with potatoes and butter, pan-fried until its outer shell is a golden encrusted throne for your juicy roast chicken to sit on top of. Along with the two lamb stews that come with it—yes, you read that correctly, two—this is a dream come true, assuming that you, like us, drift off thinking about a Crispy Foods Of The World buffet filled with trays of the corner sections of lasagne, blackened bits of naan, and now the crust of this tahdig.
The homeliness of Tehran_Berlin, from the dim lighting and mismatched chairs, to the Ottolenghi and Momofuku cookbooks on the shelf, is sometimes at odds with the food served in the week. It can be delicious, but the fine dining-ness brings an air of stiffness to the atmosphere. Kind of like going to the pub in a suit, or eating a Pot Noodle out of a 900-year-old bone china bowl. This isn’t the case on Sundays. Comfort-wise and flavour-wise, everything makes sense. And that’s a headspace everyone wants to be in.
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
Food Rundown
Squid In A Leaf
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
Oysters
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
Khask Bademjoon
Sea Bream, Saffron Mussel Sauce, Miso
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli
Rack Of Lamb, Lamb Shoulder, Cauliflower Purée, Black Garlic, Aubergine
photo credit: Giulia Verdinelli