Restaurant Review - Anar Persian Restaurant
Monday 25 March 2013
Anar is a new Persian Restaurant and Wine Bar in the heart of Terenure. ‘Persia’ - isn’t that Iran nowadays - I can hear you say! Yes, indeed it is, but doesn’t Persia sound so much more romantic. It brings back memories of the last Shah, Mohamed Reza Pahlavi, and his beautiful wife Empress Soraya, whom he divorced because she couldn’t have children, going on then to marry Farah Diba of the famous Beehive hairdo, with whom he did have a family and with whom he escaped the Revolution. Anyway, enough of Persia’s colourful history, it’s the food we are on about here! Anar means pomegranate, the agreeable lady on the floor told me. We had been greeted by an equally friendly young man and were seated on the ground floor on a long banquette with exotic ‘throne’ high backs. Anar is quite deceptively big, as there are also two levels upstairs, a dining area, and a lounge bar area.
I rather like Middle Eastern Mezze, a variety of different little starter dishes, both hot and cold, generally tasty and interesting, and if you are an aficionado of Lebanese food, with which we are more familiar in Ireland, you will enjoy Persian food. Appetisers generally were €5.50 - €7 and included a mixed Feta and olive salad; Kofteh – meatballs; and Mirza Ghasemi – smoked aubergine, fried tomatoes and garlic, topped with a fried egg and served with bread. There were also two mixed platters - a vegetarian selection at €12 and a meat platter at €17.50. We opted for the mixed vegetarian platter (€12) to share and were more than ecstatic when a large wooden ‘Lazy Susan’ was put in the middle of the table with four very ample bowls holding Salad Olivieh, Kask E-Bademjoon, Hummus and Masi O Khiar, centered with pitta bread triangles. This actually was quite a ‘feast’ in itself and I would go back to Anar for this alone. Salad Olivieh was a substantial mix of finely shredded boiled chicken, eggs, potatoes, and gherkins, blended together with mayonnaise and olive oil, and embellished with sections of tomato and gherkin. Kask E-Bademjoon was fried mashed aubergine with Kask (whey), fried onions, garlic and mint. Hummus we are well familiar with and this was decorated with three central chickpeas, whilst Mast O Khiar was yoghurt and cucumber sprinkled with chilli.
Mains offered “Stews” or “Grills” priced from €15-€25.50 mainly chicken or lamb based, both lamb chunks or meat balls. I opted initially for Ghormeh Sabzi a lamb stew, but being almost unceremoniously stuffed to the gunnels after the starter, they kindly allowed me to switch to a King Prawn Kebab (€25.50). This proved 14 grilled prawns lined up, a bit like the food pyramid, in two rows above a healthy amount of sautéed new potato halves and some salad. It was pleasant, if innocuous enough, but at €25.50 too expensive for King Prawns – different if they were Dublin Bay prawns. Mary had Barg (€18.50) which was described as “one skewer of juicy fillet of beef marinated in saffron served with grilled tomatoes.” This was a long ribbon of beef served with a dipping sauce, tomato halves, potato halves. The beef didn’t inspire Mary but she loved the feather light aromatic rice.
You really can’t go to a Middle Eastern restaurant without having a dessert. At Anar they had European “individual’ chocolate, pear and almond, and French apple tartlets. My eye however was on their Persian Desserts which included Persian ice-creams and Sholve Zard, a fragrant rice flavoured with saffron and rose water, decorated with cinnamon, almonds and pistachios. We shared the Baagh Lava (€5.50)– the traditional Baklava made with Phyllo pastry filled with ground nuts soaked in sugar syrup and amazing. With a bottle of Il Pozzo Gavi 2011 (€25.50) and mineral water (€3) our bill with optional service came to €99.45.
We did like this particular ‘pomegranate’ but next time we would just gorge on starters and desserts – maybe that’s a female thing.
Anar,
Persian Restaurant & Wine Bar,
101 Terenure Road East,
Dublin 6.
Tel: (01) 492-0050
FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT