After a pleasant Turkish dinner at Turquoise Grill in Houston last year, followed by countless shawarma lunches at a cheap cafe on Durant this semester, I figure I should venture eastward and attack Iran, with a fork. The first target is 5 blocks away: Alborz Restaurant. Take a look at the old menu to get an idea, but there are more items on the real menu, and the actual price is roughly two times higher. Being carnivorous as I am, I couldn’t resist the sound of a lamb shank with baghali polo (green rice with dill and lima beans) (pictured above). Ignorant me, I didn’t know the lamb shank was so little. It’s just about the size of a big turkey leg. Slow cooked in a vegetable stew, it’s more tender than deep fried turkey (which I had for an early Thanksgiving dinner). According to the far-eastern tongue, the stew fell short by at least a teaspoon of sodium chloride and a tablespoon of sucrose, per lamb shank. The polo (basmati rice), however, tastes slightly salty. It makes a dish alone. Each grain is slender and bare, the miniscule fibrous […]

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