The Westernization of Iranian Culinary Culture

Abstract

The last two decades have seen the construction of an Iranian “national cuisine” in cookbooks published outside Iran, while the post-revolutionary migration of Iranians from their country has led to the opening of Iranian (also called “Persian,” especially in the United States) restaurants all over the world. The menus of these restaurants evince a certain uniformity. Main dishes fall into three categories: chilawkabāb (white rice with grilled meat, widely considered the “national” dish); stews (khūrish[t]s) with white rice (chilaw); and colorful rice concoctions incorporating meat, legumes, vegetables, and occasionally fruits (pulaws). The total comes to a maximum of about twenty dishes, which one could be forgiven for taking to be the corpus of traditional Iranian cuisine. The similarity of restaurant menus everywhere suggests a basic culinary cohesion, while “tradition” implies that Iranians’ eating habits have undergone minimal change over a long period of time. Both propositions need to be qualified.