Eat What’s In Season

Cafe Shiraz
Cholamandal Artists’ Village, Injambakkam, ECR, Chennai
Tel: 9840572126; Open Sundays only
Meal per person: Buffet lunch Rs 450

It started out as a sculpture garden set in the midst of the well-known Cholamandal Artists’ Village on the busy East Coast Road (ECR) that has become Chennai’s heritage highway.

Under the care of chef-owner Nasrin, it’s been transformed into a Persian garden of culinary splendour, confered the name Cafe Shiraz in honour of her hometown in Iran.

“I want to make visitors feel as if they’re having a meal in our home,” explains Nasrin. Every Sunday, there is a marvellous spread of dishes. They remind you how much we owe to Persian cuisine in our pursuit of kababs, saffron-scented pilafs, orange, khus and rose-tinted sherbets, cakes and desserts.

Nasrin not only cooks many of the dishes, but supervises their display in large oval platters filled with glorious mounds of pilaf served Persian-style—glittering with berries from Iran, or with burnt crusts that have been scraped off the bottom of the pan, or scattered with nuts, strands of saffron and raisins or caramelised orange rind instead of the famous black cherries from Meshed in north Iran. Her husband Farhad, a businessman for  most of the week, keeps up his end of the Persian tradition by serving chai and conversation like you might find in the famous bazaars of Tehran, from where he comes.

The Sufi tradition includes the sharing of food as a means of spreading Baraka, grace. Between the two of them they have created a magical outdoor garden of delights.