{"id":173294,"date":"2026-03-24T14:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/173294\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T14:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:34:10","slug":"this-nowruz-dinner-in-new-york-city-was-a-celebration-of-persian-cuisine-and-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/173294\/","title":{"rendered":"This Nowruz Dinner in New York City Was a Celebration of Persian Cuisine and Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At dinner, I\u2019m seated across from Omid Afshar, the founder of Club Joon, which hosts events celebrating \u201cPersian culture, music, and connection\u201d across cities including New York and London. (Naturally, Afshar was in charge of the dance party following dinner.) I told him I loved his name, and he proudly asked me if I knew what it meant. I said yes, as I\u2019m Pakistani, and Urdu borrowed the word, which means \u201chope,\u201d from Farsi.<\/p>\n<p>As brown kids in America often end up doing, we find ourselves talking about diaspora\u2014how the label can be frustrating, and how the word is so easily flattened. How no one in any diaspora has a simple relationship to it, and how it\u2019s always as beautiful as it is complicated. It\u2019s a subject that felt especially timely given the ongoing conflict in Iran, which everyone in the room had surely thought about every day since it started. I have too. But diasporas are never monoliths, and within the Persian diaspora, there are no easy answers around what the best solution is for their community. That\u2019s exactly why the preservation of traditions like Nowruz is sacred.<\/p>\n<p>And one of the richest traditions of Nowruz is, of course, the food. The menu began with crispy saffron rice bites topped with caviar and Barbari bread from Jonny\u2019s Pizza served with dips, then followed by a breathtaking display of Nasrin\u2019s Kitchen\u2019s slow-cooked lamb and fish with crispy skin and stewed sabzi and legumes\u2014so much food that, at times, it was hard to keep the courses straight. (Though it was impossible to miss the giant tins being toted around the dining room and bar for impromptu caviar interludes.)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Image may contain Food Food Presentation Cutlery Meal Furniture Table Dinner Adult Person Dining Table and Meat\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ResponsiveImageContainer-dkeESL cQPiWi responsive-image__image\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Kate-Owen_Persian-New-Year-2026_0635.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>photography shot by Kate Owen @thekateowenKate Owen<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Image may contain Food Food Presentation Meal Plate Adult Person Dining Table Furniture Table and Wedding\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ResponsiveImageContainer-dkeESL cQPiWi responsive-image__image\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Kate-Owen_Persian-New-Year-2026_0369.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>photography shot by Kate Owen @thekateowenKate Owen<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Image may contain Billy Joe DuPree Cutlery Brunch Food Dining Table Furniture Table Bread Blade Knife and Weapon\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ResponsiveImageContainer-dkeESL cQPiWi responsive-image__image\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Kate-Owen_Persian-New-Year-2026_0148.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>photography shot by Kate Owen @thekateowenKate Owen<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Image may contain Food Meal Dish Food Presentation Adult Person and Bowl\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ResponsiveImageContainer-dkeESL cQPiWi responsive-image__image\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Kate-Owen_Persian-New-Year-2026_0662.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>photography shot by Kate Owen @thekateowenKate Owen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At dinner, I\u2019m seated across from Omid Afshar, the founder of Club Joon, which hosts events celebrating \u201cPersian&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[70649,9,24,55,54,56],"class_list":["post-173294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-dinner-party","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}