Persian food goes upscale at this Calabasas restaurant

There was a time when — if you had a hankering for nice plate or kashke bademjan, tahdig or fesenjoon — you had to negotiate the terrors of the Ventura Freeway, and the quirks of the 405, to make your way into the Westwood-adjacent neighborhood of Tehrangeles.

That’s where you would find the biggest Persian community in Southern California. But, in recent years, as with most of our city-side ethnic communities, the Persian population has shifted to the suburbs — especially to the West Valley.

These days, if you crave ghormeh sabzi, zereshk polo or chenjeh soltani, you can find fine versions at Shirin, Bibi Sara and Kourosh, which are all in Woodland Hills. You can even find a Persian special event restaurant that serves a feast on weekends, by reservation only, in Topanga called Yaldaz Corner.

Most recently, you can find a cookbook full of the foods of Iran in Calabasas, at Meez. It’s a restaurant with a small name in a large space, with an outdoor patio, an indoor semi-patio, and a dining room with a fine view of the staff running dishes in and out of the kitchen. And when I say running, I mean running — large tables of dining families tend to order a large number of dishes, most of which take up a fair amount of tabletop.

Where some of the West Valley’s Persian restaurants opt for regional extensions — with dishes from throughout the Middle East, and even down into Greece — Meez sticks to what the website describes as “traditional and modern takes on classic Persian cuisine” and “traditional Persian flavor brought to the heart of Calabasas.”

There’s no ahi tuna in the date and tahini salad. The chicken koobideh is not served as a sushi roll. If there are “modern takes,” they seem to be in a small selection of California-friendly salads. Along with the date and tahini salad (with sliced nuts and honey), there’s a fig and berry salad (with walnuts, feta cheese and pomegranate purée), and a watermelon and feta salad (with tarragon and fresh mint). I don’t think I’ve ever seen watermelon on a Persian menu hereabouts, though apparently it’s a popular ingredient in Tehran. It’s a traditional dish that fits our tastes just perfectly.

There are two dishes that have long defined Persian cooking for me.

One is the wonderful strained yogurt called labneh, which comes flavored with dill, and which I swear I could eat by the gallon. It tastes more like a tart sour cream than a classic yogurt. And in Persian (and Middle Eastern) cooking, it’s often used as a spread.

Over there, it can be found dried into balls, and covered with herbs and spices. At Meez, it’s liquidy and goes very well with the dolmeh — grape leaves that are supposed to be stuffed with ground beef, split peas and basmati rice, but which seemed to be mostly somewhat overcooked rice.

Dipping the dolmeh into the labneh improved it considerably. Actually, I wish labneh was on the menu, served as a dish that stands alone. (A tasting plate of labneh in its various forms would be a treat!)

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The other dish that defines the cooking is tahdig, which amazed me the first time I tasted it, and amazes me to this day — especially the way that it differs from restaurant to restaurant, from chef to chef. (And for all I know, from day to day!) It’s sometimes referred to as “scorched rice” or more accurately, “crispy rice.”

For an acolyte of the joys of crunch, it’s a dream dish … and an essential part of any Persian meal. It’s the counterpoint to the softness of so many of the dishes — the fried eggplant and caramelized onions of kashke bademjan, the beef and kidney bean stew called ghormeh sabzi, the sweet and sour ground walnut, and chicken stew in pomegranate sauce named fesenjān (a wonderfully mellifluous name).

For those who want to be a bit less exotic, they can choose from any of the many nicely grilled beef, chicken, lamb and seafood kabobs. Rice abounds, for this is a rice cuisine, not a noodle cuisine.

And though I enjoyed the semi-outdoor space with its overhead greenery, I did notice the kitchen had some trouble keeping up with the orders on the night I visited. The servers were hustling. But my dolmeh took more than a half hour, and came out with the entrée, not as an appetizer.

Still, it’s a pleasure to look around and see so many Persian families, and non-Persian families, with tables piled high with food. This is festive food, to share, to bond over.

And even though the appetizers were slow in arriving, the taftoon bread came out instantly. It tasted very good with labneh. It was an evening sweetened with the house-made lemonade — and an abundance of strong Persian tea.

Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email [email protected].

Meez

• Rating: 2 stars
• Address: 23508 Calabasas Road, Calabasas
• Information: 818-222-5800, www.meez.la
• Cuisine: Persian
• When: Lunch and dinner, every day
• Details: Wine list; reservations important
• Atmosphere: Meez is a unique, upscale Persian restaurant, just off the freeway in Calabasas, with three dining areas, one of which is outdoors. It features a menu that obviates the need for freeway-clogged journeys to West Los Angeles for tahdig.
• Prices: About $50 per person
• On the menu: 11 Starters ($4-$14), 6 “Greens & Grains” ($12-$18), 3 Stews ($23-$26), 6 Rice Dishes ($18-$28), 5 Beef Mains ($26-$44), 4 Chicken Mains ($26-$34), 2 Lamb Mains ($42-$44), 2 Fish Mains ($36-$38), 3 Desserts ($10)
• Credit cards: MC, V
• What the stars mean: 4 (World class! Worth a trip from anywhere!), 3 (Most excellent, even exceptional. Worth a trip from anywhere in Southern California.), 2 (A good place to go for a meal. Worth a trip from anywhere in the neighborhood.) 1 (If you’re hungry, and it’s nearby, but don’t get stuck in traffic going.) 0 (Honestly, not worth writing about.