I’m a couple of days behind with my restaurant reports. I was supposed to post my first Ireland restaurant report and another Italy report over the weekend and did neither. And so instead of the promised Twin Cities report, here is my first report from Ireland. It’s a good thing I don’t write this blog for a living and also that nobody really gives a shit when I post anything. Anyway, our travels this summer took us from Italy to Ireland. I’m far from done with my meal reports from Italy but figured I’d mix some Irish content in to switch things up a bit. And what could be more Irish than a Persian/Kurdish restaurant? No better way to begin the Irish reports, I say. It’s also an appropriate way to begin the Irish reports because Passion 4 Food was the location of both the first and last meal we ate out on our six-week Irish sojourn. Which is not to say we ate those meals at the same restaurant. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Kurdish Cuisine
Babani’s Kurdish Restaurant (St. Paul, MN)
Babani’s claims to be the first Kurdish restaurant in the United States. I say “claims” not because I have any reason to doubt them but because their origin story starts with the wonderful first sentence, “There was, there wasn’t…” This origin story, which is plastered on their website and on their menu (you can read it below) may be—despite some poor proofreading—the most original in the admittedly not-very studied genre of restaurant origin stories: charming despite presenting some rather old-fashioned views of the relationship between men and women; substituting for desultory listings of kitchen antecedents and wealthy backers, a playful tale of immigrant movement and desire that is as touching as it is tall.
A Kurdish restaurant in Minnesota? Why not? There are plenty of us here who never expected to end up in a place like this, so different from the climates—emotional and physical—we grew up in. The story of what it means to be Minnesotan is still being written. Continue reading