What does a striking Iranian restaurant in London bring to Los Angeles?

Berenjak, the fourth and counting global location of a London-based Iranian kebab house, opened its doors in the SoHo Warehouse complex in the city's downtown Arts District in late September. My interest in its arrival boiled down to one question: What could this import contribute to Persian culinary culture in Southern California, home to the largest Iranian population outside of Iran?

The answer in one word: vibrations.

Most of Berenjak's menu will be familiar to anyone who has dined at Persian restaurants in Southern California: various cuts of meat skewered on skewers, piles of rice and crusty bread, a crucial plate of feathery herbs hiding cubes of salty cheese, and starters of creamy sauces and pickles that extend other flavors as the dishes continue to arrive, helping to define the soul of a meal.

In general, one would expect similarity of options from one place to another. Iranian American food writers Andy Baraghani and Naz Deravian shared their parallel childhood experiences with me years ago. Khoresht, or stews, are the foundation of Iranian home cooking, with endless regional and seasonal variations that vary from home to home. Families or groups tend to go out for kebabs and the standard repertoires available in these restaurants are generally attractive by design. Azizam, the Silver Lake cafe that embraces home-style cooking (where specialties like fall ribs are slow-cooked with quince, prunes, carrots and potatoes) represents a rare and wonderful exception.

The menu at Iranian restaurants can be a ritualized mix of kebabs, breads, rice and side dishes. Berenjak meets the standards.

(Ron De Angelis)

Berenjak, on the other hand, hangs his individuality in an unusually luxurious setting. The interior dining room, divided into two levels and connected by a slowly sloping ramp, might seem like a cynical backdrop at first glance. Tiered shelves, arranged exactly with short lamps, ceramics and plants, almost rise to the high ceiling behind the six-seat bar. Framed prints of Persian art and geometric patterns fill one wall. On the second level, diners can peer into the large, well-equipped kitchen through paneled windows. At dusk, the atmosphere sets. The lighting becomes dim and flickers, designed to flatter. Darkness falls around the tables like curtains.

Although he may never enter the building again. I'll be outside in the patio garden, one of the most seductive patios I've seen in the city. The foliage has a cultivated wild character: olive and citrus trees, young palms and other plants and shrubs intertwined in dozens of shapes and shades of green. Seating is arranged along the stone walkways, with some spaces almost submerged in greenery for added privacy. Heated with fire towers, it is the ideal place even in winter; That's good to know, as at the moment major inland reservations tend to book up weeks in advance.

Wherever you land, start dinner with a few mazes.

Between two bread options, lean towards the taftoon, a balloon inflated with sourdough and thin enough to break into pieces easily. Dip them in any of three classic sauces, all worth ordering: mast-o-musir, yogurt with dried Persian shallots and an unconventional and winning addition of fresh goat cheese; mast-o-khiar, yogurt with diced cucumber, fine green raisins and a fleeting aroma of rose petals; and kashk-e-bademjoon, eggplant cooked over hot coals, combined with whey into a thick paste and sprinkled with dark, bright dried mint. Order the basket of dill, basil and other herbs, with cubes of feta-laced Bulgarian cheese called sirene, to create more textured and complex bites wrapped around chunks of taftoon.

A variety of maze includes; kashk-e-bademjoon, eggplant cooked over hot coals, mixed with whey and sprinkled with dried mint; black truffle olivieh; mast-o-khiar, yogurt with diced cucumber, green raisins and rose petals; and mast-o-musir, yogurt with dried Persian shallots and fresh goat cheese. Order them with taftoon bread.

(Ron De Angelis)

This is an ideal setup for what for me ended up being competent dinners overall: safe and middle-of-the-road seasonings, a few true highlights, a handful of odd letdowns.

The presentations are impeccable. Order two or three kebabs and they appear as images of uniformity: neat rectangles of meat, uniformly blackened by smoke and fire, with a charred tomato to mash into rice, an important accompaniment. A few crunchy grains arrive on top of the pile, hinting at the pleasures of tahdig (the coveted layer of crispy rice that requires skill to cook properly at the bottom of a pot) without investing much effort. Sangak, the other flatter bread, traditionally cooked by spreading the dough on stones, is placed on plates beneath the kebabs, deliciously collecting their juices.

Chenjeh, lamb bathed in a spicy marinade with a slight hint of saffron, is my favorite kebab, the one that yields to the fork but has a bolder flavor. Jujeh (chicken breast) does its job as an empty canvas, best for painting with leftover yogurt and pairing with perfectly chopped torshi (pickled vegetables). The poussin, spread with garlic, sumac and red pepper paste, was unpleasantly floury. Koobideh, always the popular kid of kebabs, is made at Berenjak in a style that uses lamb shoulder ground so finely that the meat resembles small, distinct sausages, rather than a continuous shape formed in wavy patterns on the skewer. The flavor came out as livery, which I could appreciate, but the consistency bounced against my teeth, which I didn't enjoy. Then I got hungry for koobideh at Mini Kabob in Glendale.

Chenjeh, lamb in a spicy saffron marinade, is one of the favorite kebabs, the most daring in flavor.

(Ron De Angelis)

And going back to the maze for a moment, the strangest disappointment on the menu was the hummus, a dish that is not an ancient part of Iranian cuisine, but which, like many of us around the world who love scrambled chickpeas, has been adopted from its origins in the eastern Mediterranean. Berenjak's version tries too hard, using black chickpeas and a “tahini” made from sunflower seeds, resulting in a blend of ingredients that resembles a grainy chocolate mousse and rings with a flat, bitter earthy tone.

Cocktails land on the other side of the spectrum. They are relentlessly sweet. A carbonated version of doogh, the ubiquitous Persian salty yogurt drink, is frothy and refreshing on its own. But as a base for an alcoholic drink, it is mixed with vanilla and gin and tastes like a post-adolescent experiment. The cocktails, which include coconut butter, grape leaf, marigold-infused tequila and saffron-tinged mezcal, read and drink as condescending, a British restaurant group's misconception that Californians want silly, busy drinks.

Saffron Carajillo and Grape Sour cocktails at Berenjak.

(Ron De Angelis)

I must remind myself in these examples that there is a person behind Berenjak's conception. In 2016, Kian Samyani was a chef in London and looking for a new job. He had started in restaurants as a teenager, working in his father's Tex-Mex cantina in a suburban district with the fantastic name of Twickenham. In the mid-2010s, he had finished working at Barbecoa, a now-closed huge steakhouse that was part of Jamie Oliver's portfolio, and had taken some time off to regroup, traveling around Spain.

Samyani ended up responding to an advert seeking a grill master for a planned spin-off of Gymkhana, the fine-dining Indian centerpiece of JKS Restaurants, one of London's largest restaurant groups. Knowing that directors were thinking of new restaurant themes, Samyani ruled out one: How about a kebab house that channels the food he remembered from his childhood trips to Tehran with his family?

The first Berenjak opened in London's Soho district in 2018, in an elegantly scruffy space in the spirit of Samyani memories. A partnership with Soho House, the international members' club founded in London in 1995 and acquired by MCR Hotels in 2015, brought Berenjak's expansions (not all, as in Los Angeles, open to the public) to Oxfordshire, Dubai, Doha and Brooklyn before the Arts District outpost.

I think about this as I spoon more ghormeh sabzi onto my plate. It's my favorite dish at Berenjak, one of the few khoresht that regularly appears on kebab house menus, a reduction of lamb, beans and herbs cooked to an attractive mulch and enhanced with black lime. This one maneuvers through exciting polarities: slow-cooked while exuding fragrance and freshness, meaty but markedly herbaceous, at once homely and refined. Its excellence implies greater possibilities.

This is my distant wish: When Samyani takes advantage of life at JKS Restaurant, he heads to Los Angeles, tastes our Persian food scene, and stays to open a truly personal expression of Iranian cuisine that none of us have seen or tasted before. Meanwhile, what we have are mostly pleasant interpretations of homemade kebab staples, served amid subtropical glamour.