Parisa

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8 out of 10
4123 rue de Verdun

Montreal, QC

This is a secret that should get out:

Pomegranate should replace balsamic and lemon goes with everything, but just enough, not too much.

The real secret that should get out is that Parisa is a Persian restaurant in Verdun with a young Iranian Chef in the kitchen with good tastebuds and stellar interpretations of traditional recipes. It's a nicely sized menu of appetizers, grilled and braised meats, grouped as "traditional", "Healthy", or "Chef's Recommendations", carefully seasoned and carefully paired with much more than a heap of white rice. Actually, the rice was the biggest surprise of the meal. I'm not going to write an entire review about rice, but I am going to be pretty enthusiastic.

I would never have thought that rice with dill, thyme, shredded carrots, and lima beans could be as fluffy as air but still have a real flavour. It's all about getting the highest quality rice, says Chef Payam. He has to get it from Toronto, since the imported Basmati isn't available isn't available in Montreal. It also about washing it thoroughly to remove the polish (this also keeps the rice kernels apart), soaking, and boiling and then steaming it (I think that's what he said...) to inject it with air. You can still taste the little bit of olive oil used to keep the rice from sticking to the bottom of the boiling pot, but the most flavour comes from the rice itself. This is rice you just want to keep eating and eating. It came with a braised lamb shank as part of the Baghalie Polo Mahicke ($17.95) in a slightly lemony gravy that was a bit over-salted and not wonderfully tender. I'd order it again just to get the dilled rice.

Simple saffron (real saffron, not turmeric, the cheap substitute) basmati rice comes with grilled chicken chunks in walnut and pomegranate sauce ("Fessenjoun" - $14.95). It was supposed to be with chicken thighs but all that were available were breasts, so the results weren't as tender as they would have been normally. When your restaurant is a secret it's hard to get the turnover you need to keep everything stocked and prepped. The sauce was the highlight here. At first it seemed sweet and sour, and then the bitterness of the walnuts kicked in at the end.

All these main dishes came with a side salad - a standard handful of mixed greens with what I assumed to be a balsamic vinaigrette. Nope, wrong. Tamarind was the souring agent and maybe some pomegranate for sweet, and of course, lemon. Take that ubiquitous balsamic.

Barberrie rice, an un-dilled but saffron-infused rice, comes with the Jujeh chicken breast skewer ($12.95). This chicken had marinated long enough, and had a light lemon flavour...actually most dishes had a lemon flavour. It was never overpowering, but it was always balanced with the rest of the herbs, spices (my guess is sumac and thyme) and meats. It was also never the only flavour. That would have made the food boring. Persian food is not boring, it's just rarely as well done as it is at Parisa. Barberrie is kind of like a currant. It's a small, sour fruit sprinkled on the rice. The other highlight of this rice was the grilled tomato that gets squeezed on top. What a great idea for seasoning rice. You need a flavourful tomato for this to work, but Quebec is full of good tomatoes. One that's a little sour is even idea, because the sweetness would get lost in the starch.

The only time the acid was overwhelming was in the mushroom appetizer. I kind of liked it, though. This one was not so traditional. I don't think there are a whole lot of mushroom dishes in Iran, but I could be wrong. It used lime instead of lemon. A whole lot of lime. The whole button mushrooms absorbed a ton of oil and were incredibly juicy. The pomegranate reduction was hard to identify since the lime was so strong, but the whole thing worked really well with the mild sweetness of the finely chopped deep-fried garlic on top.

You can start with a soup, Ghorme sabzi, for $3.95 for a small or $5.95 for a large, but you get it for just $1 with the purchase of any of the above mentioned mains. It would be more than enough for a lunch, though, since it's loaded with rich broth, oil, leek, spinach and dill. It also had noodles, which I found a bit odd, but apparently that's acceptable. It just kind of makes the thing harder to eat and a bit more like something you eat at home, not something at a gourmet-ish restaurant. I say "gourmet-ish" because the olive oil was artfully drizzled and the soup was garnished with parsley and spiced walnuts. The walnuts weren't as crunchy as they could have been...a little time in a skillet or an oven would have helped, but they weren't overly sweetened (which would have been a disaster) or too salty. So all in all, a nice touch.

One of my favourite things was the Mirsza Ghasemi, a roasted eggplant dish ($4.95). This is not babaganoush. Why does everyone think every eggplant dip ever created is babaganoush? There's no tahini in this. There's a slightly smoky flavour of the eggplant and little tomato combined with a slight pucker of lemon. With warm, thin pita bread, it was perfect. There was a whole lot of oil in there, since eggplant sucks that stuff up like a sponge. but oh was it good. The texture is left slightly chunky to create a thickness that you need to chew and enjoy before swallowing. On this menu, "healthy" means healthy fats, not low-fat or low-calorie.

You can also get the home-made yogurt or the Fizzy Yogurt imported carbonated beverage. It's just carbonated water, milk and yogurt culture, but it's about the best carbonated anything you have, full of healthy bacteria in yogurt, the Middle Eastern/European and now North American super-food. Get on the food trend bandwagon, or go to Parisa where it was a practical tradition long before it was the cool, healthy thing to eat.

Really, just go for the rice. Chef Payam tried to convince me it had fewer calories than other rice, but I think that's hooey. I think the only way I can believe this is if what he really meant was that because the rice was fluffy there was more air in it, so you eat less per portion. A denser rice would have more actual rice per serving. BUT you add the oil in this rice and you up the calories and fat anyway. It's still so good for you, and come on, it's rice. There's nothing unnatural about it. It's the highest quality, most naturally-flavourful rice in Montreal, I'm convinced. That's a completely ungrounded statement, by the way, but I believe it. Oh, you also go here for the beef. The ground beef is incredibly tender and rich. Fat is flavour and ground meat has flavour. Where the lamb failed, the beef succeeds. This Chef knows his seasoned meats, his rice, and his herbs and spices. Wait, he also knows his fruit...hmm...maybe lets just say he knows a thing or two about Persian cooking.

Expect To Pay: $20-$30 per person including tax and tip (no wine cost since it's BYOB)
When: lunch and dinner, I think everyday but Sunday but call for reservations so they know someone's coming and can braise things and marinade things in preparation for your arrival.
4123 rue de Verdun
514-768-7777