‪bahar Naranj - Ristorante Caffeteria‬

Went there for lunch as I was in Deira for work. The management has changed recently and they are doing a very good job.  Nice food, and an outdoor seating area. For lunch I had the Koobideh with freshly baked bread =5/5and after lunch a nice pot of Iranian tea with saffron rock candy stick.

Bahar Narenj (Orange Blossom) is something of a paradox – it’s good but not that good.

This is an Iranian restaurant targeting Iranians, locals of Iranian descent and adventitious foodies. There’s stuff on their menu you just don’t find in other Iranian restaurants in Dubai – like the Gardan (slow cooked lamb neck, which you can have with either green or white rice) or Khorake Zaban (slow cooked lamb tongue, this served with bread) or even their Del-O-Jiggar (bbq’ed lambs liver and heart) and lastly, there’s Kaleh Pache (sheeps head and trotters which for some reason is NOT on the menu) – good stuff but most certainly NOT for fainthearted women…or sensitive men. There’s also an ever-changing dish of the day, which for some reason I am a sucker for – the DOTD when I visited was Shevid Loobia Polo ba Morgh (Dill-green rice dotted with black eyed peas served with fried chicken) – it’s a very Shirazi dish. But I should have chosen one of the rock stars.

The restaurant itself is small; a bit of a dump really but there’s a large, Ramadan style tent out in the middle of the walk way (how on earth did they get permission for that?) which has a number of tables on one end and sofas on the other catering to both diners as well as shisha smokers and loungers. The problem is that it too is a bit of a gaudy disaster, an interior designer’s nightmare. But you know what? We sat there for a good hour eating our Shevid Loobia Polo ba Morgh with Salad Shirazi and Mast Khiyar and throughout the time no one so much as raised an eyebrow other than to acknowledge the quality of the food. So, will I go back? Absolutely. But this time for the Gardan or maybe the Zaban or maybe…