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Global Grub: _Columnist travels to Tehrangeles to get a taste of the Persian Square's ethnic food_

The Boneless Chicken Kebab includes charbroiled chicken, a grilled tomato and a portion of rice topped with decorative yellow saffron-infused rice.

By Arit John

Sept. 30, 2011 2:18 a.m.

As a kid, I never invited friends over for dinner if we were having Nigerian food. It’s hard to explain to people what egusi soup and foo foo are, why the head of the fish tastes the same as the rest of it, or why goat meat is possibly better than cow meat.

I’ve always known that people tend to be afraid of eating foods from other cultures, especially if they don’t have the ingredient list in front of them. I just never thought I was one of them. And yet, until recently, trips to Chipotle and Panda Express were about as adventurous as I got with my food.

So this column is dedicated to the foods of the world and to places that serve authentic, un-Americanized versions of different ethnic foods.

Persian Square, or Tehrangeles, is centered on Westwood Boulevard in the area south of Wilshire and north of Pico Boulevard. The further south ones goes, the more likely one is to see signs in both Farsi and English advertising shops, grocery stores and sit-down restaurants.

According to Ras Minaei, the manager of Flame Persian Cuisine, the area is approximately 85-90 percent Persian, and the residents prefer the area for the centrally located shops and restaurants. As for his own restaurant, Minaei said its bread, baked on-site in the panour (Farsi for oven) separates them from some other restaurants.

One common aspect among many of the restaurants along Westwood is how upscale they are. Some, like Shaherzad, are set up more like brightly lit tea rooms while others, like Flame Persian Cuisine are darker and trendier. But all of them are pristine-white-napkin sorts of places. This can lead to high prices (most entrees are at around $12-16, if not more) but the portions are often large enough to share.

And it’s easy to get full off the bread, too. Most Persian restaurants offer free baskets of toston, a kind of flatbread ““ it’s usually warm, soft and served with butter and onions. Equally filling are the appetizers, many of which are spreads eaten with bread.

My three guests and I ordered Shaherzad’s Combination of Cold Appetizers, which came out to $4.50 per person after tax and tip.

It comes with shirazi salad (chopped cucumber, tomato and cilantro with olive oil and a very strong lime taste), mast’o mosir (a creamy, white combination that tastes like savory yogurt), mast’o khiar (my personal favorite, made of yogurt, herbs and crunchy chopped cucumbers that tastes like tzatziki), hummus (garbanzo beans, sesame seeds, lemon juice, garlic and olive oil) and sabzi khordan (a plate of feta cheese, walnuts and raw herbs including mint and basil that I didn’t touch).

Though the English half of the menu breaks down the ingredients in each meal, Shaherzad’s manager, Zohreh Forouhi, broke down some of the names for me.

“Polo” refers to a cooked rice dish, “koobideh” refers to something that has been mashed (probably ground chicken or beef) and a “kabob” (or kebab) is anything made over an open fire.

The Boneless Chicken Kebab from Flame Persian Restaurant, for example, comes with pieces of charbroiled chicken breasts sitting in their own juices, a grilled tomato that’s good by itself and a generous portion of rice. The rice was topped with decorative yellow saffron infused rice, and was cooked with butter. It goes well with everything else on the plate.

It was $11 for a half portion, but the food was well cooked, flavorful and well crafted. Even the saffron used to color the rice yellow comes from a rare, expensive plant common in Northern Iran.

Email John at [email protected] if you also fill up on bread before the meal comes.

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