Sofreh is one of the hottest restaurants in Brooklyn, and it only took Nasim Alikhani 30 years to open it.
“I am bringing my entire life into this,” she said on a recent Tuesday, sipping water out of a to-go container in the shade of Sofreh’s back patio.
Since Sofreh debuted in 2018, it’s been called “NYC’s most exciting Persian restaurant.” Alikhani was a guest chef for the White House in March, she was invited to be one of 10 chefs at the Met Gala in 2021, and she has a cookbook out later this month.
And on Monday night she’s up for a James Beard Foundation Award as best chef in New York — one of the industry’s top honors.
Scott Heins for Gothamist
Sofreh is so buzzy that even its bathroom, papered in vintage Iranian film posters, has received breathless media coverage, once featured in an article about “thrilling” bathrooms.
Alikhani will be accompanied by her daughter, who manages her Instagram and marketing, and her husband, who co-owns the restaurant, at the awards ceremony in Chicago. She is one of five people nominated for best chef in New York, alongside talents like Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy and Mary Attea of the Musket Room.
“The blessing keeps coming,” said Alikhani. “It’s one thing to be a good cook and have your restaurant filled, but it’s also another thing that the highest standard of the industry comes and notices you.”
In a city where you can find just about every kind of cuisine, what makes Sofreh the hot new thing is actually generations old.
And for its head chef, it’s the culmination of a journey that began with fleeing her native Iran after the revolution, to rebuilding a life and starting a family in the U.S., to climbing to the top of an industry that is nowhere more competitive than in New York City.
Alikhani is putting a modern spin on recipes she learned from her grandmothers and her mother, a school principal who made home-cooked meals every day.
She’s serving up dishes like lamb shank with dill and lime…
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