Delectable Persian Food in North Vancouver

Ground beef and chicken kebabs with crispy Persian rice

Today we went on a culinary adventure -- not only crossing the bridge to North Vancouver, but also trying some Persian food.

A friend's classmate is married to an Iranian and his mother-in-law suggested we go to Khaghan Restaurant in Capilano Mall.

There were four of us -- two visiting from Hong Kong who were eager to try the food, as it's not something you'd find there, and they had fond memories of eating it several years ago in another restaurant in North Vancouver.

Braised lamb shank with dill rice

I wanted to try some authentic food and had no idea where to eat it. We were told that Persian restaurants are not common, as people feel most comfortable eating their food at home, but these dishes do take a lot of work and time to prepare.

When we arrived, we were the only Chinese people in the restaurant, which was not very busy for a Friday for lunch. Nevertheless, we peaked the interest of our waitress who was surprised and then delighted that our tour guide (the friend's classmate) knew several of the dishes and the ingredients. 

I just had an apple for breakfast, but was soon filled up with lots of delicious food, mostly lamb.

We started with some bread with an eggplant dish called mirza ghasemi, like baba ghanoush, but more yellow in colour thanks to the addition of tumeric. We also had a small bowl of olives that were seasoned with sweet and savoury herbs and spices, and two similarly sized bowls of yoghurt, one with ground cucumber, the other with shallots.

For drinks we had a jug of Persian yoghurt called doogh. It was not too thick, and wasn't just salty like a lassi. Instead it had various dried spices in it, including mint and just a touch of salt. It was a great way to clean the palate.

Vegetable stew and lentils on crispy rice

Soon after our main dishes arrived and they were served on large platters!

One was called mix tahdig, featuring yellow lentils on one half of the dish and herb and vegetable stew with kidney beans on the other, and underneath both is tahdig. It's a Persian crispy rice made from basmati rice, flavoured with saffron and is carefully fried on the stove so that the bottom is crispy, almost like a thick cracker. And it's great for this dish, as the toppings are soft, while the bottom gives a crunch. It still held up a few hours later as leftovers.

We were here to try the dizi with lamb, a traditional lamb stew with chickpeas. It is served in a small tin pot. We were given clamps to tip the hot soup out, and then used a metal pestle called goosht koob to mush the lamb shank along with the ingredients it was cooked with -- potatoes, tomatoes, chickpeas, beans, onions, dried lemons, cinnamon and tumeric.

The soup is then portioned out, everyone gets a spoonful of the mushed meat mixture, and then they help themselves to the bread called noon sangak that is ripped into small pieces into the bowl.

Dizi with lamb and bread

It immediately reminded me of the yang rou pao mo I ate in Xian many years ago. It is also a kind of steaming hot lamb soup, and you take naan bread (it's round and stiff) and break it into small pieces to put in the soup.

As Xian was part of the Silk Road, it's not surprising a version of dizi with lamb ended up in the Chinese city, which also has a Muslim quarter.

The dizi here was hearty, flavourful and the meaty mush was so delicious, we began thinking of other ways to eat it, from mixing it with pasta to putting it on toast.

We also ordered braised lamb shank with dill rice, though the braised lamb neck was even better, but it came with a plain tahdig. The dill rice is also delicious, mixed with broad beans. The lamb in both dishes were braised to the point where the meat fell off the bone so easily, and there was even marrow to extract from the neck bone.

One more dish we had was vaziri, featuring a skewer each of chicken and seasoned ground beef, also served with tahdig and a roasted tomato. The ground beef was heavily flavoured with spices, and both meats were tender and hardly dry even though they were cooked over open flames. We speculated they may have been marinated in a salt solution beforehand.

Braised lamb neck with crispy Persian rice

Needless to say we were extremely full afterwards and didn't finish everything -- we got several takeaway boxes and packed everything up. My friend took the most back, filling four boxes and giant sheets of the bread!

Khaghan Restaurant

Unit 66 - 935 Marine Drive

North Vancouver

(778) 340 9065