Interview at Marjan Fine Persian Grill

This past Tuesday, we went to Marjan Fine Persian Grill to fully immerse ourselves in the culture of Persian food. While we were there, we had the opportunity to talk to the owner and ask him a few questions.

Q: What do you think is unique about Persian cuisine?

Persian cuisine, what’s unique about it? In that region, the whole region at one point had the same type of food. We have one of the most oldest dish. What you had tonight? The Fesenjoon? I’ve been told my a lot of group of people who belong to a women’s reading club, a book club in East Hanover. One day they call me up, they say we have this one dish, so they made a reservation they came in. They read this book about the Great Cyrus, and he was the maker of that dish in Persia. So that’s how old this dish was.

Now, the way they do cooking in Persia is slow cooking. Work, work, work, work, work. All the days, they get up at six o clock and really right after breakfast they have to have lunch. And really in that region, everybody cooks using the same spices, everybody cooks the same food using the same spices but the technique is different. You have the rice, you can actually count the individual rice. In India, the rice is squishy. The same meat will be cooking in the grill but the marinating and the process are different. Most of the people like to use the natural food, the animals prosper. They’re grass fed animals, so the meat color and taste is different.

Q: What do you think is the pinnacle dish of Persian cuisine?

Rice with everything. Two things Persians eat a lot are rice and bread. Bread is one of thet things that must be on the table. Why? I don’t know. They have probably originally 5 types of bread.

Q: What’s your personal favorite Persian dish?

Me personally, lamb chops. Shishnik. We eat a lot of lamb. In lamb here we eat a lot of fat. If you look at a lamb in tag region and see the little butt hanging, that’s where the fat is. That fat we use in a lot of different dishes. Stress and a lot of different things. Lamb chops is the best. I love it myself. A lot of people like the fesenjoon.

Q: How do you think cooking in general is important to Persian culture?

I don’t think anyplace they eat like Persian. When they eat, they eat, they don’t mess around. You see the big long table they eat off of, Italian are the same, but they eat pasta. But we put a lot of rices, a lot of different rices. We have different rices for special occasions, different kinds of soup for different time of the year. At winter we have a different soup than in the summer. The winter soup is a little heavier than the summer soup. The rice is no matter winter for summer. Lamb is a lot, every part of the lamb they use. They use, a lot of people eat lamb’s head. I have two girls, one day when they were younger, they go into the fridge and see two lamb’s heads, they see it, they scream! So now they don’t like lamb head anymore. But usually lamb in the wintertime is a breakfast. A really good breakfast, I’ll tell you. Basically we don’t waste any part of the lambs.

Q: Where did you learn to cook? What inspired you to open a restaurant?

I left the food industry for 18 years. I worked for a lot of places… but then I went crazy! I had to do something. So then I go back to the food industry. I said you know what? In Morristown they don’t have a Persian restaurant. That was 10 years ago.

Anytime you want to cook something, not only cooking in general, if you love what you do and you try the best you can. No matter what you do, if you try, just have to be patient. Then you go into the kitchen especially, there are two rules in my kitchen. Rule number 1, no offense, there are no women allowed in my kitchen. Simple. I cannot work with women in the kitchen. Because women are people that are so neat! She said, you used 10 dishes for one dish! Leave me alone! And the people have to be patient with me in the back. You don’t be patient, don’t even come here.

Whenever you want to cook something, put it this way, I believe that cooking is artwork, because you have to have a passion for the details. Patience and passion for it. When you touch it, you have to feel it. You have to feel that stew you’re cooking. It’s something people laugh at me for, they think I’m crazy. When I look at that stew, I can tell that the stew is too much water or not, doesn’t feel right or not, without even tasting it. This what I do. Maybe I’m crazy, I don’t know. If I’m crazy, I’ve been crazy for a long time so the rest of my life I’m going to be crazy. But you have to be passionate for it, passionate about what you do.