[custom_adv] Fluorescently lit pizzerias serving by the slice are city staples dotting every borough of New York City. One pizzeria, however, Pizza Paradise in Manhattan’s Flatiron neighborhood, has a unique corner. [custom_adv] Saeed Pourkay, originally from homeland, ladles out his home cooked Persian soups and stews for customers who line up at his minuscule corner counter space within the pizzeria. [custom_adv] Pourkay, who has a distinguished salt and pepper mustache and dons a bright red chef’s jacket, opened Taste of Persia NYC, six years ago. Word has spread among persian food enthusiasts, gourmands and those who relish unconventional dining experiences. [custom_adv] Pourkey’s space is cramped but sufficiently accommodates several stainless steel soup servers, warming platters and rice cookers. Customers can take their food to go or eat with plastic forks at no frills tables among the pizzeria’s clientele. [custom_adv] Taste of Persia NYC is a lunch and early dinner spot; its small menu written on a white board changes daily. Dishes in rotation might include the hearty lamb stew abgoosht, or ghormeh sabzi, a stew of sautéed vegetables and beef or lamb, among others. [custom_adv] Classics like ash reshteh—a rich vegetarian noodle soup with legumes topped with fried mint, caramelized onions and garlic, and a swirl of whey white sauce, known as kashk—are nearly always available. [custom_adv] Behind the scenes cooking prep photos, like trays of bright green okra pre-stew, are often found on Taste of Persia NYC’s Facebook page; all dishes are prepared in the pizzeria’s back kitchen. [custom_adv] In between customers and cooking, Pourkay explained how he launched and ran a graphics and printing business with his brothers for nearly 30 years, attempted a green products enterprise which failed and led to nine months of homelessness and, finally, how his former printing business neighbors helped him launch Taste of Persia NYC. [custom_adv] Surrounded on three sides by casserole dishes, rice cookers, and boiling soup pots, Pourkay serves specialties such as āsh reshteh (a thick bean-and-noodles soup that takes eight hours to make and gets garnished with dried mint and dollops of tangy kashk), fesenjān (a meat stew with a walnut-pomegranate molasses base), and gheimeh bademjan (a beef stew with yellow split peas and eggplant). Most of it is served with fragrant saffron rice. [custom_adv] Pourkay, who is from capital, ran a print shop across from Pizza Paradise for almost 20 years, before deciding to cash out his share of the business and follow his dreams. The memory of the āsh reshteh he used to buy from street food sellers in capital, as well as the version he’d make for his parents, inspired Pourkay’s second act as New York’s preeminent Persian food chef. [custom_adv] For a time, after quitting the print shop, he was homeless and living in a friend’s Brooklyn warehouse, but his neighbors on West 18th Street had his back. One of them gave him a freezer and a refrigerator to get his new business started, and the owner of the pizzeria let him use the front window rent-free for the first few months. [custom_adv] Initially, Pourkay took baby steps by first selling his āsh at the Union Square Holiday Market in 2012. In early 2013, he opened his counter at Pizza Paradise. Four years later, the pizzeria was forced to temporarily close after a fire. [custom_adv] But Pourkay was undeterred: A GoFundMe campaign raised enough money to help him while he set up his annual stall at the Holiday Market and worked without a storefront. The chef returned to his usual haunt at the front window of the renovated pizzeria in January 2018, and he’s remained there ever since.
