The Damavand mountains can only be seen from the north of Tehran. One night, we went up there for dinner at a traditional tea house.
Damavand mountains
The tea house which is situated beside a river, is a place where they used to serve the flavoured tobacco used in hubbly bubbly or shisha. However, the government began stopping a lot of these traditional tea houses from serving them and that was the case with this one.
Inside the tea house
On another night, we went with some of my wife’s friends to another tea house in the mountains that offered hubbly bubbly. At most restaurants/tea houses, the food they serve is Persian style kebabs.
Kebabs are made of minced meat, usually beef, but can also be lamb that is ground/mixed with finely grated onion (not chopped) and a Persian spice called Sumac. The mixture is then pressed around long flat metal skewers, cooked over a barbeque then served with rice and flat bread. While it’s not a bad dish, it does become a bit boring after the nth time.
They also do marinated chicken kebabs as well using chicken pieces. I’m not sure what’s used in the marinade for the chicken but I believe saffron is part of it. Saffron is also used in the rice by frying it lightly in olive oil/butter and then pouring the golden yellow sauce over the rice.
Dinner at Tea House
The photo above shows the remnants of the dinner we had at the tea house. I forgot to take a photo of the food when it arrived as I was starving hungry. Iranians don’t like to eat early and quite often we found ourselves having dinner at 9, 10 and even 11 pm.
My advice to the uninitiated, take snacks in a back pack. I wish I had!
Next in Part 4: Tehran Photo Stories
Photographs are copyright Bryan Freeman – All rights reserved.
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Looks like it was Pepsi all ’round with that great local food!
No Coke! 😉
You could get Coca-Cola at some places but this particular tea house only had Pepsi.
I found Pepsi to be more prevalent in some Middle-eastern countries, so I wasn’t surprised to see it there.
when the put in the smoking ban in Paris, they also included the shisha cafes which I found a bit of a shame. I don’t care to smoke them myself but it seems like it was the big draw of a lot of those places and it’s too bad that people who want to experience that can’t.
That’s a real shame because shisha cafes are for that purpose. Just like cigar clubs. You go there if you want to partake not just sit around…
Such a shame the government stopped the smoking of the water pipes. Hope nothing like that happens in Turkey. Smoking indoors is forbidden now but there are nargile (water pipe) cafes that have been inventive and created ‘the outdoors, indoors.’ There’s always a way in Turkey! 🙂
Julia
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