Iranian food: Konj Café offers a taste of Persian culture and cuisine when dining out in Edinburgh

“I don’t call it authentic,” she says, despite the fact that many ingredients are carefully sourced from her home country, or UK suppliers of Iranian foods in London and Glasgow. She gives the cusine’s cultural past a modern makeover, in the same way that Persia itself has evolved. “I apply those changes to the food. My aim is to make Iranian food popular to the local community.”

And indeed she has. What started as a 10-seater café just before lockdown is now an 80 seater, two-floor restaurant, although it retains its café name. It has attracted glowing reviews – The Times said it was their top Persian pick, enthusing: “This piece of Persia stole my heart.”

Faranak is a woman determined to carve her own path in life and do things her way. She is a champion of single mothers like herself, believing they are capable of achieving anything. As a former flight handler at one of the world’s busiest airports, Heathrow, she is used pressure.

“That stress is nothing like setting up and running your own restaurant,” she laughs.

The language of love

Teenage arguments with her mum were often resolved by her mother cooking Faranak her favourite dishes – something she now does for her own teenage daughter.

Food is there to comfort, to celebrate, to enjoy, soothe and seduce.

And yet, she says, Iranian food in the UK is often reduced to just kebabs – which fail to tell the intricate story of Persian food culture. Kebabs in Iran are an infrequent meal. The dishes in her restaurant are what she would serve you if you came to her home, made with the same love and attention to detail. These are traditional recipes and flavours but changed, and finessed. And they look as beautiful on the plate as they taste on the palate.

Flavours include delicate saffron, pomegranate, and rose water mixed with subtle herbs and spices like cinnamon, cardamom and nuts and barberries to enhance vegetables, fish, or meat, creating gentle, sweet and sour dishes which delight and tease the tastebuds, not overwhelm them.

“If I don’t like how a dish tastes, or it’s not right, how can I serve it to you?” she says. “And it has to look as good as it tastes.” It is in the surroundings, décor and tableware that her Iranian heritage mingles with some Scottish homeliness – a balanced blend of two cultures.

Creating a home from home

Faranak always wanted to travel and studied English from an early age in Iran, knowing it was essential for a move abroad. She grew up in the beautiful town of Sanandaj, in the West, before her family moved to Tehran, where her mother and father and many other friends and family still live. She says Edinburgh is more like Sanandaj and both the city, and the people, have made her feel welcomed and at home.

With the war and internet blackout, contact with her Iranian family and friends is limited. Calls are expensive, made to landlines, paid in dollars, and consist of a few general reassurances about health and wellbeing. Her father is in his 80s, not well and she worries about him and all the family. Work keeps her going, she says.

The regime she grew up in Iran meant women like Faranak were able to study but most women, including her own mother, looked after the home and the family, and did not work.

“My mother was not a great cook though,” she laughs. Her grandmother and great grandmother provided that culinary inspiration.

She left Iran 24 years ago, and has now spent as many years in Europe. First she went to Cyprus and, and worked in travel and tourism. She was married and the couple moved to London, where she worked as an aircraft controller – the person responsible for ensuring all runs smoothly on the ground between flights. She said it was hard for an Iranian to find work airside, but she admits she doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer!

She’s used to controlling operations, working at speed and ensuring smooth-running. Good training for juggling all the aspects of running an 80-cover dining room, which offers not only lunches and dinners, but now breakfasts and brunches too, plus events and catering.

Heathrow was stressful; cooking and baking was her relaxation. She cooked too much for her and her daughter to eat, so took it into work to share.

“They used to say to me ‘You should open a café!’, and I started to think about it.”

A trip to Edinburgh and the realisation that true Iranian food had not found its way here, helped make her mind up and she moved north and opened her first small cafe – 10 tables serving breakfasts and lunches.

That was at the end of December 2019, just before covid. Then lockdown happened.

“I stared doing takeaways,” she said. “I had to keep working. I delivered food and cakes to customers’ houses – many of those people are my customers still today.” When life returned to normal she was busy, and needed to expand and moved to her current premises, and took most of those original customers with her.

“I love to make people feel at home,” she says. Her customers are locals, regulars, theatre-goers – the café is in the shadow of the Lyceum– and increasingly Iranian people seeking comfort and strength from a little taste of home, in troubling times.

The extensive menu offers creative dishes from stews to savoury wraps, warm robust salads and sides and pastries and sweets which offer the perfect accompaniment.

Cocktails served in delicate glasses and an eclectic mix of carefully curated vintage cutlery and crockery add to this overall experience of both warm homeliness and ‘something special’. Eating here is relaxing, but also a treat for all the senses, and one which you won’t forget.

So what dish does she love to recommend?

“I get so many people say they don’t like aubergine,” she says. “They say it’s tasteless and oily, and I say, just try mine!” They invariably love it. It’s this surprise and delight on diners’ faces, that keeps Faranak, and her 15-strong workforce, going.

The essentials

Konj is at 15-17 Grindlay Street, just steps away from the Lyceum Theatre.

It serves lunches and dinners from Tuesdays to Saturdays and, new for this year, it opnes on Sundays offering a typical Iranian brunch menu.

Check out the menu, photos and information on booking, catering and gift cards here