Bha! Bha! Persian Bistro
Naples, Florida
After operating a successful Persian café in Baltimore, Michael Mir moved to Naples, Florida, and opened Bha! Bha! Persian Bistro in 1998. His multi-part menu offers some safe options for conservative diners and many classic Persian dishes for the more adventurous.
The concept
The restaurant seats about 70 people, with room for 40 more outside. It's Florida chic, with ethnic touches. We didn't want to have a classical Persian restaurant with seating on the floor or traditional pictures on the walls. My partner (now deceased) was a wonderful artist, so we decided to hang tapestries he wove. He chose the colors of the restaurant: orange and lime green and rust. There's a fountain in the middle of the dining room, and eventually we got one piece of Persian art, a frieze. It's comfortable, colorful and laid back, but you can't help feeling that you're in a Persian setting.
The name
It's a quintessential Persian phrase for admiring the scent of a woman, or an aroma when you walk into somebody's house, like: "Bha! Bha! What are you cooking?" But we didn't know how to spell it because we didn't want the connotation of Ali Baba. A friend suggested that we spell it differently, so we have the almost-silent "h." Persians hate it. They say we misspelled it.
On modifying Persian dishes to appeal to local tastes
I consider that my specialty. Take khoresh, which is an elegant braised stew done with lamb most of the time, or with beef or poultry. These khoresh are something every mother makes; they take two to three hours of simmering. However, you can take some of those spices and ingredients and veer off and take ideas from other areas. That's what happens to me, traveler that I am. I'm in Mykonos having this wonderful dish, and I think, "This would be good if I put some Persian ingredients in it."
When I was in Southern Spain and had paella, I thought: All I need is some Florida fish and Florida shrimp, some prawns and mussels. I have Persian saffron and basmati rice and my lamb stock. I can make paella in about 15 minutes. It's not a traditional one, but it's a fusion of Persia and Spain.
What Americans want
They don't want to see bones. They don't want to see sardines with heads, or fish with tails.
But customers are allowing me to push the envelope a little. In Baltimore, I served khoresh-e qeymey, a lamb stew with sun-dried Persian limes. They're black and look like Ping Pong balls. You throw them in the dish and they soften up and their sour juice oozes out and gives the dish a tiny bit of sour. Some dishes are not good without it. So I made it in Baltimore and a young woman calls me to the table and says, "There's something horrible in here." She had bitten into the skin of the sour lime. So for 12 or 13 years, I did not serve that dish. Now I make ghormeh sabzi, every Persian's favorite khoresh, with half a dozen fresh herbs and braised lamb shank and sun-dried lime, and nobody complains.
I didn't know what to do with the bones from my leg of lamb. So we started leaving some meat on the bone to make ab goosht, literally "water and meat." It's a peasant soup that construction workers pay pennies for. In Iran, it's served in a clay pot with a big loaf of bread—garbanzo beans, white beans, potatoes, tomatoes, those meaty bones and sun-dried limes and a nice broth to dunk the bread in. When I went to Las Vegas and saw Emeril Lagasse serving lamb shank, I thought, ‘Thank you, Emeril. You are giving bones to people and they're embracing it." So now ab goosht is on my menu, and people are embracing it.
Persian dishes the locals "just don't get?"
I'd like to work with some organ meats, but I haven't dared do it here. I don't think this town would go for those flavors. But this year, I think I'm going to try some liver and some veal tongue—poached veal tongue with saffron, cream and shiitake.
One great idea
Instead of serving a Sunday buffet or brunch, I'm going to do a Sunday mazze'h (small dish) menu. I created a three-course lunch, where you can choose two appetizers from a dozen, two entrees from a dozen, and dessert the same way. So you have two half-portions on a plate. I hate tiny little bites. I'm going to do a mazze'h menu, but with decent portions.