Where: 936 Washington Street, Hoboken, New Jersey

What: Persian

Rating: 2.5/5

After having been given the honor of choosing which restaurant to try out this week, I decided on Seven Valleys, a small Persian eatery on a busy street in Hoboken. I had been craving albaloo polow for a few days at the time, and the place wasn’t too far from where I live. Before then, I had only really been to Hoboken one other time many years ago, so this was my first real experience with the city and all the wonders it had to offer.

Our aforementioned destination was found on what I can only assume to be one of the main streets, nestled in-between two buildings, fairly small, and with no parking spaces left for anyone hoping to venture inside. It was somewhere around 3:00 in the afternoon on a Sunday, and we approached the restaurant to find a young woman seated outside at one of the handful of outdoor tables arranged by the storefront.

Although I was unsure, it quickly became apparent she was indeed a worker there, standing up to greet us once we were noticed. After revealing we were merely a party of two, we were encouraged to choose our own seats and left while she went to scavenge for menus. The decor of the small restaurant was modern and nice enough, not overtly Persian, though there were clear signs here and there in pieces of decor on the far wall. I particularly took note of the different colored and shaped light fixtures above us, with my mother finding the circular vase most striking.

Sliding into the bench against the far wall, my companion taking the chair across from me, we waited perhaps a handful of minutes for a menu to be presented to us. I was disheartened to see we had a brunch menu, something I hadn’t expected for 3:00pm, supposedly when the brunch period would end. To my chagrin, the dish I had chosen the restaurant for was not on this brunch menu, instead things like “Chocolate Tahini-Stuffed French Toast”  and “Seven Valleys Granola and Fresh Fruit” were offered. This was my own fault for miscalculating the time, but I was nonetheless disappointed.

To start with, we decided on an order of a side of hummus, and myself also getting the popular yogurt drink, Ayran. For the main course, I ordered the Kuku Sabzi, wanting to try something I had never had before, while my mother went the more familiar route with Chicken Breast Kabob. While we waited for our orders, I couldn’t help but notice one of the chefs coming back to the restaurant from somewhere. It had been a few minutes since we had ordered, and once he passed into the back, I heard our waitress give in our orders. At the time I had thought he was the head chef off for a break, understandable enough, and given his return our orders were then sent through.

He then proceeded to walk out and leave again not soon after. I was quite confused by this, but thought better to just let it be as I did not nor do I now know the way the kitchen there runs.

I cannot complain about the Ayran, Ayran is Ayran no matter the glass it’s put in. The hummus was acceptable, though the tahini was a bit too strong for my taste, but certainly not unpalatable. We were also lucky enough to have around the right amount of bread for the dish which most places tend to not give, though the expected pita was more akin to Turkish pide than what I had been predicting. Nothing wrong with that, really, pide is perfectly delicious by its own merit.

The wait was neither too long nor too short, and soon came our main courses. As the two young men who had separately come in after us resolutely ignored my mother’s and my half-argument half-conversation, the food was placed before us. Mine was as pictured below, a spinach frittata with pomegranate seeds, yogurt sauce, and diced cooked potato.

I don’t know what I was expecting, I know what a frittata is and I know I have always disliked spinach. As a child I used to beg off eating it, claiming the taste alone made me physically ill. Of course, now as a grown adult I do enjoy spinach in certain forms, but this was not one. The dish tasted of spinach and nothing else, with the pomegranate taste oddly completely absent. There was a bitterness to the spinach that often seems to be lost when sauteed or turned into a dip, something I had neglected to realize before it was too late.

The yogurt sauce was akin to tzatziki rather than labneh, for those of you who have never tried masto khiar. Of course, the potatoes were the most striking of all– they tasted exactly as you would expect. That is, like potatoes. As someone a quarter Polish, I wouldn’t dare complain.

While I cannot say if the dish was cooked well or not, it being something I had never tried before nor something I would have enjoyed either way, I can say my mother greatly enjoyed it after we swapped dishes.

As for my mother’s original dish:

Simple enough. Boneless chicken breast kabob, saffron mixed rice, with a shirazi salad, half of a grilled tomato, and half of a lime, all garnished with sliced green onion. I did not eat the shirazi salad, a cucumber and tomato salad, nor the tomato or lime. I’m not a fan of any of these, and my mother is. Might as well let her enjoy at least part of her dish before I swiped it from her, just as I had swiped her freedom and adult life after allowing her a few years of enjoyment.

The rice had no taste of saffron, not surprising as saffron is expensive and it is common for places to use a little bit for a big batch, but disappointing nonetheless. The chicken, however, was notable. Compared to the other similar restaurants I have frequented for kebabs, the meat here was especially juicy and cooked well, I had no trouble eating what was leftover from the first few minutes before I made us swap meals. Although the meat was not particularly spiced in a unique way, it was far from bland. I would certainly recommend it to anyone going here for a meal.

Of course, I couldn’t resist ordering the sholezard rice pudding for dessert. Rice pudding is a delicacy I am more than happy to indulge in now and again, though I am particular to the Indian variety. That said, I was surprised to find the rice pudding completely yellow when it arrived, with a dried rose and some of its petals scattered across the top. I had never had the Persian variant of the dish before, but I now know it is decidedly normal for the sweet to appear like this.

My advice for that is this and this alone: if you enjoy the taste or rose water, this is the dessert for you. If you do not enjoy drinking perfume, I suggest you steer far and away from it. Even my father, who does enjoy rose water to an extent, could only eat a bite before being unable to eat a morsel more.

I do not know if it is normal in Iran for the rice pudding to taste as flowery as this one did, so I cannot say if it is good or bad by the standards it usually would be held to, but I do caution you on ordering it. I have never had a dessert taste so much like rose as I had this dish.

All in all, it was an alright experience, if not somewhat disappointing. The prices were, for the most part, reasonable enough when compared to other restaurants with similar fare. Would I go out of my way to eat here? No, not really. There is a much closer and, in my opinion, better Persian restaurant I know of with a wider variety of food. That said, if you’re in the area, it wouldn’t hurt to give the place a try.