¹ Colman Andrews, The Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1984, 101.

² There is an emphasis on the topic of identity (and therefore more theoretically heavy analyses) as well as the use of popular culture and political engagement to assert this identity. Consider Zohreh Sullivan, Exiled Memories: Stories of Iranian Diaspora (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001); Ziba Shirazi and Kamran Afary, eds., Iranian Diaspora Identities: Stories and Songs (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2020); Riza Ghulami, Secularism and Identity: Non-Islamiosity in the Iranian Diaspora (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2015); Farzaneh Hemmasi, Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020); Manijeh Moradian, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022); Benedikt Romer, The Iranian Christian Diaspora: Religion and Nationhood in Exile (London: IB Tauris, 2024).

³ There is, of course, scholarship on the topic of ethnic and religious Iranian minorities in the United States. To name a few of their contributions to this literature: Houman Sarshar, ed. Esther's Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews (Beverly Hills, CA: Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, 2002); Saba Soomekh, From the Shahs to Los Angeles: Three Generations of Iranian Jewish Women Between Religion and Culture (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012); Jessica Kelley, “Narratives of Exclusion: The Experience of Iranian Baha'i Refugees in America,” Journal of Refugee Studies 25, no. 1 (2012): 45–62; Faegheh Shirazi, “The Politics of Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Religion in the Iranian Diaspora: The Case of Iranian Jews in the United States,” Journal of Jewish Identities 5, no. 2 (2012): 101–119.

⁴ There are some doing this type of work, with a helpful volume in The Iranian Diaspora: Challenges, Negotiations, and Transformations, ed. Mohsen Mostafavi Mobasher (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2018).

⁵ Monica Perales, “The Food Historian's Dilemma: Reconsidering the Role of Authenticity in Food Scholarship,” The Journal of American History 103, no. 3 (2016): 690.

⁶ Ibid., 691.

⁷ Although this particular article emphasizes the dialogue between Iranians and Anglophone patrons, food (as a category of historical analysis) can also offer insights into the ways in which Iranians sought out, or shied away from, engagement with other Middle Eastern, Asian, and African communities in the west—as well as the ways in which those communities understood Iran.

⁸ Jennifer Jensen Wallach, How America Eats: A Social History US Food and Culture (New York, NY: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), xiii.

⁹ Laleh Khalili, “The Savor of Memory: A Review Essay on Iranian Cookbooks,” Middle East Research and Information Project, February 9, 2021, https://merip.org/2021/02/the-savor-of-memory/.

¹⁰ There are some recent treatments of the Iranian diaspora's food culture in the United States, especially from anthropological and sociological perspectives. See Anita Colby, Jonathan Friedlander, and Ron Kelley, eds., Irangeles: Iranians in Los Angeles (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2023). Even, for instance, in Matthew Shannon, American-Iranian Dialogues: From Constitution to White Revolution, c. 1890s-1960s (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), 12, the historian provides a fascinating account but still does not take up the issue of food culture, though he does mention cookbooks briefly. This represents an area that would certainly complement his effort to “[eschew] national leaders and government officials in Washington and Tehran” and, instead, emphasize “the multidirectional flow of people and ideas between the United States and Iran,” 3, as I try to do here. H.E. Chehabi, “The Westernization of Iranian Culinary Culture,” Iranian Studies 36, no. 1 (2003): 43–61.

¹¹ Andrews, The Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1984, 101.

¹² Khalili, “The Savor of Memory.”

¹³ Reza Gholami's treatment of the Iranian diaspora's association with “Persian” as a more contemporary phenomenon is typical, Secularism and Identity, 162. That said, I believe his diagnosis of the use of the term “Persian,” as “not so much [a] reflect[ion of] a community,” but rather “a demand for it,” is likely accurate, 165 (emphasis in original text).

¹⁴ Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Heroes to Hostages: America and Iran, 1800–1988 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 2.

¹⁵ Ibid., 2.

¹⁶ Mary Douglas, “Deciphering a Meal,” Daedalus 101, no. 1 (1972): 62; these themes are also present in Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked (University of Chicago, 1969).

¹⁷ Matt Garcia, “Setting the Table: Historians, Popular Writers, and Food History,” The Journal of American History 103, no. 3 (2016): 660.

¹⁸ Ibid., 660 (New York: Viking), 1985.

¹⁹ Jane Dusselier, “Understandings of Food as Culture,” Environmental History 14, no. 2 (2009): 332.

²⁰ Donna Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 5.

²¹ Priscilla Parkhust Ferguson and Sharon Zukin, “What's Cooking?” Theory and Society 24, no. 2 (1995): 193.

²² Anecdotally, I have walked down too many bookshelf aisles in libraries that claim to contain books about one topic only to find cookbooks have crept into their territories, apparently by popular demand.

²³ Shaheem Black, “Recipes for Cosmopolitanism: Cooking Across Borders in the South Asian Diaspora,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 31, no. 1 (2010): 4.

²⁴ Shoon Lio and Megan Bott, “From Asian Fusion to Asian Hipster Cuisine: Consuming Cosmopolitanism and Authenticity,” in Chop Suey and Sushi from Sea to Shining Sea: Chinese and Japanese Restaurants in the United States, ed. Bruce Arnold, Tanfer Tunc, and Raymond Chong (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2018), 191.

²⁵ As Josee Johnston and Shyon Baumann write in their famous Foodies: Democracy and Distinction in the Gourmet Foodscape (London: Routledge, 2014), “foodies shape their world—the gourmet foodscape—around distinctions between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods. We argue that the drawing of these boundaries between good and bad foods reveals how people think about cultural consumption more broadly,” and that the “authenticity and exoticism” both “produce status in the contemporary United States,” 4.

²⁶ I would be remiss not to refer to Hamid Dabashi's Iran: A People Interrupted (New York: Routledge, 2007) here, considering my similar use of the term.

²⁷ “Iranian Stuffed Eggplant Pleases American Palates,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Nov 17, 1955, 11.

²⁸ Yotam Ottolenghi, “Sweet‑and‑Sour Tofu with Barberries,” New York Times Cooking, February 14, 2024, accessed August 4, 2025, https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024981-sweet-and-sour-tofu-with-barberries.

²⁹ Najmieh Batmanglij, Food of Life: Ancient Persian and Modern Iranian Cooking and Ceremonies, 40th Anniversary ed. (Washington, DC: Mage Publishers, October 1,; 2024).

³⁰ Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 2 vols (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1961).

³¹ Roza Montazemi, The Art of Cooking: A Collection of Iranian and Foreign Cuisines, 10th ed. (Tehran: Katibeh, 1985).

³² Grace Kirschenbaum, “Exciting, Exotic Iranian Cookery,” Oakland Tribune, April 11, 1990, F-10.

³³ As Arjun Appadurai writes, cookbooks “combine the sturdy pragmatic virtues of all manuals with the vicarious pleasures of the literature of the senses. They reflect shifts in the boundaries of edibility, the properties of the culinary process, the logic of meals, the exigencies of the household budget, the vagaries of the market, and the structure of domestic ideologies.” Arjun Appadurai, “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, no. 1 (1988): 3.

³⁴ Cara de Silva, “Fusion City: From Mt. Olympus Bagels to Puerto Rican Lasagna and Beyond,” in Gastropolis: Food and New York City (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2010), 5.

³⁵ Lio and Bott, “From Asian Fusion to Asian Hipster Cuisine,” 191.

³⁶ Ibid., 193.

³⁷ Ottonlenghi, “Sweet and Sour Tofu with Barberries,” NYT Cooking.

³⁸ Jeanne Lesem, “Iranian Royal Chefs Blend Tasty Recipes,” Monroe News-Star, July 25, 1960, 14. This is a subject that requires much attention from scholars. Even this short article, which focuses on the subject of fusion and unusual Iranian recipes, gestures toward the relationships that developed between Iranian and western establishments for training and cultural exchange. This has attracted attention for scholars of American and East Asian history, but less so for the Middle East.

³⁹ “Persian Dish Features Meatballs with Pineapple,” The Napa Valley Register, May 30, 1972, 9.

⁴⁰ In Asian-American cuisine, this turn away from “fusion” was particularly evident by the 2000s. Lio and Bott, “From Asian Fusion to Asian Hipster Cuisine,” 195.

⁴¹ That the editors of Making Levantine Cuisine could assert that the 2021 text represented “the first book-length scholarly work devoted to Levantine food and foodways” exhibits the absence of this kind of work in the field—and the opportunities presented by a topic that elicits so much interest among both academics and non-academics.

⁴² Laila M. El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt, The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey (Charlottesville, VA: Just World Books, 2012), 16.

⁴³ Mohsen Mobasher, Iranians in Texas: Migration, Politics, and Ethnic Identity (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2012), 30.

⁴⁴ Ghanoonparvar, “Iranian Cuisine,” 96.

⁴⁵ Nesta Ramazani, Persian Cooking: A Tale of Exotic Delights (New York, NY: Quadrangle, New York Times Book Company, 1971), xvi.

⁴⁶ “The Culinary Art At Its Best,” Desert News, Dec 16, 1961, 8.

⁴⁷ On the one hand, it is important to note that different communities shared peculiarities in cooking styles. On the other hand, access represents the most important means to diversify cuisines. As Laurence Roth writes of the Jewish diaspora, “each community's cooking style and taste preferences are exactly similar to those of the peoples among whom they lived: Turkish Jews, like Turks, are fond of sweets; Greek Jews, like Greeks, use a lot of vegetables; Iranian Jews, like Iranians, prefer rice and favor onions,” and so on. Laurence Roth, “Toward a Kashrut Nation in American Jewish Cookbooks, 1990–2000,” Shofar vol. 28, no. 2 (2010): 78.

⁴⁸ Nevertheless, there are Iranian immigrants to the United States, especially from ethnoreligious minority backgrounds, whose experiences of food, in both the homeland and host country, have remained unexplored by academics.

⁴⁹ “Town Talk,” Daily News, April 19, 1970, 4.

⁵⁰ Condé Nast Traveler, a luxury lifestyle travel magazine, suggests this conceptual connection between Israel and Iran: “Over the past decade, modern Middle Eastern food has been dominated by Israeli cooking, mostly due to the global success of Yotam Ottolenghi. However, with the openings of London's The Drunken Butler, followed by Nutshell and Berenjak last year, the focus is now shifting to the subtle and sophisticated spicing of Iran.” “Where to Find the Best Iranian Food in the World,” Condé Nast Traveller, June 14, 2023, https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/iranian-restaurants-food.

⁵¹ Mohsen Mobasher, “The Iranian Ethnic Economy in the United States,” in Handbook of Research on Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship: A Co-evolutionary View on Resource Management, ed. Leo Paul Dana (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007), 229.

⁵² Ibid., 230. As Mobasher writes, “This major demographic growth and change set the stage for the gradual emergence of a number of ethnic institutions such as the ethnic media, ethnic language classes for the second generation, and professional associations.”

⁵³ Elizabeth Howard, “Persian Cuisine Fit for a Shah,” The Daily Progress, October 8, 1972, 47.

⁵⁴ “Iranian Stuffed Eggplant,” 11. Stuffed eggplant represented a common recipe theme in American magazines and newspapers interested in Iranian cooking. At the top of one Tennessee newspaper's list of Persian New Year's foods in 1960 was “Eggplant caviar.” Louise M'Camy, “Down the Market Aisle,” Chattanooga Daily Times, September 9, 1960, 25.

⁵⁵ Steven Tobias, “Early American Cookbooks as Cultural Artifacts,” Papers on Language and Literature 34, no. 1 (1998): 4.

⁵⁶ Abigail Dennis, “From Apicius to Gastroporn: Form, Function, and Ideology in the History of Cookery Books,” Studies in Popular Culture 31, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 5.

⁵⁷ Nassrollah Islami, Persian Cookery (Galway, Ireland: MW Books, 1960), 1.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat, 195.

⁶⁰ M'Camy, “Down the Market Aisle,” 25. Incidentally, sumac grows in the United States and is particularly prolific wild.

⁶¹ Khalili, “The Savor of Memory.”

⁶² Cecily Brownstone, “New Cookbooks Yield Data, Pleasure,” Carthage Evening Press, December 29, 1960, 7.

⁶³ “New Cookbooks Contain Variety of Recipes, Illustrations, Pointers,” Indianapolis Star, November 3, 1960, 38.

⁶⁴ “Let's Go Traveling,” Anderson Independent-Mail, February 23, 1975, 28.

⁶⁵ Garcia, “Setting the Table,” 657.

⁶⁶ Consider the opening line of The Art of Persian Cooking: “During the nine years that I lived in the United States of America I watched with pleasure the curiosity and interest of my friends in Berkeley, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York as they enjoyed the exotic and delicate Persian dishes I served them,” Forough-es-Saltaneh Hekmat, The Art of Persian Cooking (New York, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1961), 9.

⁶⁷ Hekmat, The Art of Persian Cooking, 11.

⁶⁸ Ibid.

⁶⁹ Montazemi, “The Art of Cooking.”

⁷⁰ Khalili, “The Savor of Memory.”

⁷¹ Elaine S. Restroom, ed., Americans Cook in Iran: A Collection from the American Women's Club of Tehran, forward by Henrietta Allen Holmes (US Embassy, Tehran, 1965), 7.

⁷² “Shepherd and Burstyn: Their Food Styles,” The Palm Beach Post, November 22, 1971, 6 of “Food News.”

⁷³ Johna Biinn, “Jennifer O'Neill Favorite—Persian Bread,” The Times Herald, July 12, 1978, 21.

⁷⁴ Islami, Persian Cookery, 2.

⁷⁵ Jan Silverman, “Karen Cooks with Culture,” Oakland Tribune (August 10, 1970), pg. 22

⁷⁶ “Iranian's Cold Soup Recipe Is Delightful,” Daily Press, January 24, 1968, 18. This recipe proved popular and appeared in cookbooks, such as Irena Chalmers's Great American Cooking Schools cookbook series, Minneapolis Star and Tribune, June 8, 1983, 5T, and newspapers such as the New York's Post-Star, August 1, 1983, 39.

⁷⁷ Howard, “Persian Cuisine Fit for a Shah,” 47.

⁷⁸ “Cooking with the Persian Touch,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, July 21, 1976, 68.

⁷⁹ Barbara Gibbons, “Slim Gourmet: Persian Dips,” The Republican, July 13, 1976, 20.

⁸⁰ Howard, “Persian Cuisine Fit for a Shah,” 47.

⁸¹ Ibid.

⁸² Mary Hooglund, “Persian Cooking: A Table of Exotic Delights by Nesta Ramazani,” Middle East Journal 29, no. 2 (1975): 229.

⁸³ Ramazani, Persian Cooking, 3.

⁸⁴ Lonie Johnston, “Cuisine from a Fabled Land…,” The Argus, April 24, 1974, 16.

⁸⁵ Paul Liberatore, “Anti-Iran Reactions Hurt Bay Area Firms,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 29, 1979, 12.

⁸⁶ For a survey of this work, see Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian Americans and the Everyday Politics of Race (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017); Sarah Gualtieri, Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Arab American Diaspora (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009).

⁸⁷ These inter-institutional relationships and the possibility of travel to Iran also meant, of course, that Persian recipes ended up in church cookbooks. For instance, “Presbyterian Fair Features Cookbook,” Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1972, 10 described the book A Touch of Thyme, which contained a recipe for Persian Perfume Cookies with almond and lemon extracts.

⁸⁸ “Wants Iranian Recipes,” Corpus Christi Caller-Times, June 5, 1958, 17.

⁸⁹ “A Man and His Meals,” Johnson City Press, September 2, 1960, 6.

⁹⁰ Ruth McAllister, “Delicious Persian Rice Has Saffron Seasoning,” Grand Rapids Press, April 15, 1977, 22.

⁹¹ Stephanie Fuller, “Parties Celebrate Iranian New Year,” Chicago Tribune, March 21, 1970, 13.

⁹² “The Unique Shape of a Mosque Is the Ubiquitous Motif at Persian Art s, a Tiny Shop,” Chicago Tribune, September 14, 1970, Section 2, 3.

⁹³ Oswald Johnston, “Chelo Kebab Hailed as Choice Iranian National Dish,” The Baltimore Sun, January 6, 1972, 25. This was not unique to Iran; in fact, as acclaimed food writer and chef James Beard lamented: “[I]n the last few years […] anyone who has made a grand tour of the three-star restaurants of France, taken some lessons at the Cordon Bleu school in Paris or spent a summer working with my friend, Simone Beck, co-author of ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking,’ feels they are now connoisseurs of French food and qualified to write a book about it.” James Beard, “Chef Deplores Rash of Claims by French Cookbook Writers,” The Baltimore Sun, January 6, 1972, 25.

⁹⁴ Johnston, “Chelo Kebab Hailed as Choice Iranian National Dish,” 25.

⁹⁵ Georgia Hesse, “Wind, Sand and Shahs,” San Francisco Examiner: Travel, February 27, 1966, 109.

⁹⁶ “Noisemakers, live entertainment,” Independent, December 27, 1971, 17.

⁹⁷ Advertisement, The Tustin News, March 26, 1970, 7.

⁹⁸ “Fire Guts Hurley's Persian Restaurant,” The Tustin News, July 2, 1970, 1; Advertisement, The Modesto Bee, May 27, 1966, F-13; “$1 Million Addition Completed,” Nevada State Journal, July 11, 1965, 32; “L.A. Fatimas Plan Party at Wayne Estate,” The Los Angeles Times, August 2, 1963, 8; “The Shah,” The Redondo Reflex, March 28, 1969, 1.

⁹⁹ “Perry Phillips: Night Sounds,” Oakland Tribune, November 6, 1973, 38.

¹⁰⁰ Of course, this was not necessarily uncommon after the revolution. The Iranian establishment a block away from my childhood home in Berkeley, California was called Casablanca, and the Iranian brothers who co-owned the restaurant managed another restaurant called Cafe del Sol in town.

¹⁰¹ “Dining: The Persian Way,” San Francisco Examiner, September 28, 1979, 24.

¹⁰² Susan Berman, “Persians In Berkeley? But, Yes,” The San Francisco Examiner, May 4, 1973, 30.

¹⁰³ Ibid.

¹⁰⁴ Pyong Gap Min and Mehdi Bozormehr, “Immigrant Entrepreneurship and Business Patterns: A Comparison of Koreans and Iranians in Los Angeles,” The International Migration Review 34, no. 3 (2000): 710.

¹⁰⁵ Indeed, an instructive experience for those of us reading who are educators. Yvonne Rothert, “Iranian ‘Potluck’ Expands Students’ Cultural Learning,” The Oregonian, June 8, 1977, 55.

¹⁰⁶ Consider Mohsen Mobasher's discussion of the anti-Iranian slogans during the hostage crisis: “Have a Happy Thanksgiving—hold an Iranian hostage” or “Roast an Iranian for Thanksgiving.” Mobasher, Iranians in Texas, 34.

¹⁰⁷ Marge Finken, “Munchin’ With Marge,” The Daily Breeze, August 20, 1971, 22, 23.

¹⁰⁸ “‘Shah’ Restaurant Changes Name,” Oregon Journal, December 19, 1979, 48.

¹⁰⁹ “Restaurant in Waldorf Shedding Iranian Ties,” The New York Times, November 27, 1979, Section A, 8.

¹¹⁰ Another opportunity for further research is an examination of the sale of Iranian products in the west, including caviar, saffron, pistachios, and Shiraz wine.

¹¹¹ Liberatore, “Anti-Iran Reactions Hurt Bay Area Firms,” 12.

¹¹² Mahin Khatamee, “Persian Cooking: Mideast Meets West,” The Record, October 7, 1981, 39.

¹¹³ Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat, 197.

¹¹⁴ Khatamee, “Persian Cooking: Mideast Meets West,” 39.

¹¹⁵ Nana Whalen, “Cook Adds Iranian Accent,” The Baltimore Sun, September 9, 1979, 211.

¹¹⁶ Andrews, The Los Angeles Times, 101.

¹¹⁷ Margaret Norris, “Iranian Cook Wants Authentic Taste,” Springfield Leader and Press, November 10, 1982, 25.

¹¹⁸ Mimi Sheraton, “Passover Meal Varies Regionally,” Manhattan Mercury, April 4, 1982, E4.

¹¹⁹ “2 Restaurants Uphold the Persian Tradition,” The Los Angeles Times, September 26, 1986, 129.

¹²⁰ Ibid.

¹²¹ Max Jacobson, “Iranian Cuisine: Hearty, Hunky, Fluffy and Sublime,” The Los Angeles Times, November 1, 1990, 192.

¹²² Ibid.

¹²³ M. McDevitt Rubin, “Iranian Feast: New Year Celebration Starts with Spring,” The Pittsburgh Press, March 24, 1985, H4.

¹²⁴ This is an area where much work needs to be done, as food festivals offer a unique social history perspective through which popular preferences and local food celebrities can be examined.

¹²⁵ Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat, 215.