Persian cuisine is a delight, especially the stews, piquant meat and vegetable concoctions eaten with fragrant basmati rice, and the kababs, cooked over a hot flame all but impossible to achieve with a normal outdoor grill. (Persian kababs are cooked on special grills that generate more BTU's.)
Unfortunately, authentic Persian cuisine has been a tough sell around here. Paymon's Mediterranean Café serves a number of dishes from owner Paymon Rauf's native Iran, while the combination market and restaurant, Habib's, does as well. But the best restaurant of the genre, called Alborz, didn't survive long. It was, for a time, the only Vegas restaurant serving dishes like ghorme sabzi, made with fenugreek and stewed meat, and several other specialties that, for now, you'll have to visit Tehrangeles—Los Angeles' Westwood Boulevard—to find.
Shiraz Café is Henderson's first Persian restaurant. It took over the 5 and Diner, one of those gleaming silver edifices resembling an Airstream trailer. The owners did a nice job remodeling, so that now there are brightly upholstered booths, a sparkling tile floor and walls festooned with pictures of rug dealers and mysterious Levantine women. There is even a Coors Light sign, which, I'm guessing, the mullahs wouldn't approve of.
As the restaurant is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as was its predecessor, there is a case of nice pastries like cinnamon rolls and elephant ears, a full breakfast menu and even—and this is a first for Vegas—a Persian breakfast, consisting of feta cheese, sliced cucumber and tomato and toasted pita bread. There is a gyros omelet, too, using gyro meat made on the premises. Hey, it's been a long time since the Greeks fought the Persians. I guess all is forgiven.
Come for lunch and you can have a nice gyro sandwich, which is especially good when you request the kitchen to make the meat crispy. Even better is the house soup, called ashe in Farsi, which I'd describe as pastafazool to the third power. The soup is based on noodles and beans, but the herbs, spinach, pureed vegetables, fried onions and whey on top, and spicing, make it one of the best soups on the planet. Traditionally served at Noruz, the Persian New Year, which occurs in April, the soup is available every day, and therefore symbolically, every day is spring in here.
The eponymous Shirazi salad is good here, too. It's really a chopped salad composed of diced tomato, onion, cucumber and herbs, tossed simply with olive oil and lemon juice. The restaurant's Greek salad is nice as well, and both these salads make a healthy lunch when eaten with a basket of the house pita bread, and the accompanying tray of feta cheese, shelled walnuts and mint leaves.
Kababs, unfortunately, are hit and miss here, although the basmati rice pilaf that comes with them is mountainous, and the rice perfectly cooked. You'll also get a whole roasted tomato, blackened on the surface, and a little side dish of mast o'khiar, a delicate yogurt and cucumber dip, with the kabab. It's a hearty meal, so come hungry.
The best kabab here, for my money, is koobideh, a cylinder of spiced ground beef. Perhaps a high price point led the management here to remove the filet mignon and lamb kababs from the menu—too bad, because both were quite good. But the chicken kabab I tasted was dry and tasteless, and when I didn't specify, the gyro meat was flaccid and undercooked.
There is also zereshk polo, which the menu describes as "amazing berries and chicken kabab." Actually, zereshk is Farsi for barberry, a purplish fruit that is dried and eaten like a raisin, with a unique, sweet-tart flavor. The berries are mixed with the rice, and very interesting. (Though they are an acquired taste, it is the closest you'll come to a real Persian entrée in this place.)
I was disappointed with my kashk o' bademjan, referred to on this menu as baba ghannouj-Persian style. When done properly, the dish is addictive—smoked eggplant browned in the oven in slices. It's just a sludgy brown puree here. I know they could do better.
Maybe they don't think they should. The last time I dined here, there was a specials board advertising chili cheeseburgers, a dish that isn't exactly sweeping Tehran. Maybe I am wrong, but I'm guessing that a lot of people have shown up here, looking for the same diner food that the old restaurant served, and turned around and left when they realized what was going on.
Too bad. No one wants ethnic restaurants to succeed around here more than I do, but it looks like if Shiraz Café makes it, it will be on the strength of hand-dipped malts, French toast and patty melts, all available on this varied and eclectic menu.
Me, I'm coming back for the ashe soup, a well-done gyros sandwich and dessert, perhaps the best baklava in the area, sweet, crisp, multilayered phyllo leaves laced with crushed walnuts, garnished with pistachio nuts and a delicate honey syrup. I hope I'm not in the minority.