Café Suron
1146 W. Pratt Ave., at Sheridan Rd.
(773) 465-6500
Persian and Mediterranean cuisine
Entrées from $8-$15
Tuesday to Thursday, 4-10 p.m.; Friday to Sunday, noon to 10 p.m.
Noise level: Conversation friendly
Full wheelchair access
Smoking: in side room only
The influence that Persian cuisine has had on Asian and Western cooking is remarkable. The naan (flatbread), garam masala, biryani (meat and rice dish) and pilaf that we think of as Indian began in Persia (modern day Iran). Lemons, oranges, eggplants and rice were brought to Persia from the East and introduced to Greece, Rome and North Africa.
A taste of the menu at Café Suron in Rogers Park brings many of these flavors to the table.
Café Suron's is a great space, the redecorated lobby of a former hotel. (You can see what once was the front desk is now the servers' island.) The ceilings soar (I am guessing they top out at 30 feet), enormous 20-foot tall windows line Pratt Avenue and walls of the color of desert sand offset black and white marble floors. The only oddities in the décor are the gargantuan fountain sitting (dry) in the middle of the room and that the walls are hung with art of the American Southwest.
I am sure that the restaurant would appreciate otherwise, but you could spend an entire dinner trying just the appetizer side of the menu.
Starter dishes include common Middle Eastern foods such as hummus ($3.50), tuffed grape leaves ($4) and chopped salad ($3.50), but none are common. Hummus is such an easy recipe that it's difficult to compare one with the other. But Café Suron's is simply terrific—smooth with just a whisper of graininess, a good dollop of tahini and (this is best) a generous pour with the olive oil.
You will need to order far and wide to find baba-ganush ($3.50, all the spellings are the restaurant's) as smoky as Café Suron's. The kitchen must conflate the eggplants on a super-hot flat grill to give them the kind of char that is such a delicious under-note.
The dolmeh, or grape leaves ($4), are terrific, stuffed with rice, onions, pine nuts and a bit of parsley and cooked so long they turn into a sort of pudding. The little tubes are served warm, which only enhances their flavors. If you pair these with one of the cooling Persian salads ($3.50)—snappy with crisp vegetables and lavishly dressed—and some pita, you could have a light meal for well under $10.
Café Suron specializes in one starter dish called kashke-bademjan ($4), a mix of cooked eggplant, caramelized onions, whey (it gives the dish some tang) and mint. It's terrific, sweet and earthy at once, and addictive when in the neighborhood of warmed pita breads.
On the flipside of the menu, Café Suron cooks up several entrée dishes, some of which are terrifically authentic.
Most people consider the kebab to be Persia's great contribution to Middle Eastern cooking—and that claim has its merits—but to my mind, the stews of Persian cooking far outshine skewers of grilled meat.
Like all stews, Persian varieties take eight or nine simple ingredients, meld them together with long cooking (usually liquid-based) and end up with something that transcends all that they began with.
For example, gormeh sabzi ($8)—a mélange of greens studded with kidney beans and flavored with garlic, onions and garlic—isn't too much to look at, but what flavor it has. Here's a way to eat those greens, over the restaurant's nicely prepared rice (both white and scented with dill) or scooped up with pita triangles.
Perhaps the most distinctive 'stew' is the fessenjan ($10), a sweet and sour mix of chicken breast swimming in a sauce made of ground walnuts and pomegranate juice and paste. Sweet and sour dishes are also typically Persian, some scholars believing that such mixes of vinegar and sweet fruit juices originated there. Don't expect much eye candy from the fessenjan. It is as distinctively delicious as it is as ugly as sin.
Of course, the many kababs show off nearly every permutation of protein possible.
Highlights: chengeh and scallops ($12) bring super tender cubes of beef tenderloin (10-12 pieces), marinated in saffron and olive oil, set aside 4-5 half-dollar sized scallops, crusted just a bit on their outside, moist and milky within. The house chicken, Suron chicken ($9) is a skewerful of tender breast pieces that have been doused with yogurt and saffron. What's best on this chicken? The small bits of charred meat that cling to the edges of each piece? Or the way the cream-moist interior gets your mouth all juicy when you bite into it?
Service at Café Suron is all smiles and quick feet. The headwaiter, Fred, lends a nice air of authenticity, if only for his genie-deep voice.
CafeSuron is BYOB, so bring on the bottles. Suggestions for this type of cuisine would be light, fruity reds such as Beaujolais or Dolcetto d'Alba; sturdy whites with lots of flavor and also high acidity, like Alsatian whites such as pinot gris or gewurztraminer; and sparkling wines from Spain or Northern Italy.
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