RedWine
04-24-2006, 01:07 PM
I can't work out where the food is from. Maybe the Middle East? There's yoghurt, parsley, lentils and lemon on the menu, but also a long list of vodkas. Maybe Ukrainian? Georgian? Inside, a couple are rubbing their bellies like cartoon cats that snacked on a mouse. They beckon me in with vigorous waves. I may as well go. I have been walking along Queen Street, Toronto, and I am hungry. I have come from the Done Right Inn, a homely dive bar with Dead Kennedies on the jukebox. The beaten sofas would have been a great Sunday refuge, but they ran out of food. I walk into Banu and feel I have crashed a party only to discover that I was a guest all along.
"Come in! Have a seat! It's our first day!" It is their first day of business. "Do we look nice? What do you think? You didn't know the type of food? It's Persian!" I love Iranian food. It is delicate and exciting. My Aunt Soori and my friend Andrew's mother cooked it for me when I was a kid. They both left Iran after the revolution. So did the siblings who run Banu. They were toddlers at the time.
I feel like a 17th-century spice trader at a desert feast as they bring me home-squeezed pomegranate juice, yoghurt sprinkled with rose petals, aubergine paste with whey and walnuts and shashlik lamb wrapped in thin lawasa bread with fresh mint and basil leaves. I ask Samarin, one of Banu's owners, about the vodka. "It was the main drink before the revolution. At truck stops, the drivers would stop for a couple of shots and a kebab. We're trying to recreate the cosmopolitanism of our country in the 70s." Samarin is petite, fizzing with gentle energy. Her shirt reads: "Rosa Parks: Tehran Needs You! For I Am Also Jim Crowed." "It's apartheid for women. I went back in 1999 and couldn't stand strangers telling me to cover myself. Iran used to be such a progressive society." There is a flash of pride in her eyes. "There's still a huge counter-culture - 70% of the population is under 30, but see politics as dirty. Bush is a retard. Without him, there would be no Ahmadinejad."
The back of her shirt reads "love" in Farsi. There is a lot of love in Banu: love of food and love of a lost home. I leave satisfied, full of food and hope for Samarin and her brothers and sisters.
Thx Franz :) .
"Come in! Have a seat! It's our first day!" It is their first day of business. "Do we look nice? What do you think? You didn't know the type of food? It's Persian!" I love Iranian food. It is delicate and exciting. My Aunt Soori and my friend Andrew's mother cooked it for me when I was a kid. They both left Iran after the revolution. So did the siblings who run Banu. They were toddlers at the time.
I feel like a 17th-century spice trader at a desert feast as they bring me home-squeezed pomegranate juice, yoghurt sprinkled with rose petals, aubergine paste with whey and walnuts and shashlik lamb wrapped in thin lawasa bread with fresh mint and basil leaves. I ask Samarin, one of Banu's owners, about the vodka. "It was the main drink before the revolution. At truck stops, the drivers would stop for a couple of shots and a kebab. We're trying to recreate the cosmopolitanism of our country in the 70s." Samarin is petite, fizzing with gentle energy. Her shirt reads: "Rosa Parks: Tehran Needs You! For I Am Also Jim Crowed." "It's apartheid for women. I went back in 1999 and couldn't stand strangers telling me to cover myself. Iran used to be such a progressive society." There is a flash of pride in her eyes. "There's still a huge counter-culture - 70% of the population is under 30, but see politics as dirty. Bush is a retard. Without him, there would be no Ahmadinejad."
The back of her shirt reads "love" in Farsi. There is a lot of love in Banu: love of food and love of a lost home. I leave satisfied, full of food and hope for Samarin and her brothers and sisters.
Thx Franz :) .