Shiraz Kitchen & Wine Bar — Restaurant in New York

We were craving some comforting Persian food and made reservations for this popular place!

It was pretty packed when we got here, definitely a good call to get reservations beforehand.

It is a VIBE here! Staff members are so friendly and nice. Got to learn a little bit about everyone and shared where we were from, such nice bantering!

They also let us know what their favorite dishes were. We ordered:

DOLMEH Fresh grape leaves stuffed with rice and lemon juice. Great vegetarian app! Could have used a little more spice in the rice. Topped with pickled vegetables. I was not a fan of the pickled vegetables and thought it made the lemon juice in the dish have more of a vinegar taste to it.

FRESH HERB This is fresh herb plate of mint, basil, tarragon, scallion, spreadable feta, walnuts and crunchy radishes. The pita was just baked and nothing beats freshly baked pita. You just add a little bit of everything from the fresh herb plate and top your pita with it and the flavors are just phenomenal.

KASHK-E-BADEMJOON This is a super flavorful, but hearty fried eggplant dip. Finger licking good, topped with fried onion, garlic and whey. Just layer after layer of deliciousness. My new favorite dip if you ask me!

MAST-O-BADEMJOON This is also fried eggplant, but with yogurt dip. Simply delicious with the pita and herb plate!

FILLET MIGNON This was such a tender and delicately spiced tenderloin. With a nice lightly, charred crust, each bite was just meat heaven. The bed of saffron basmati rice paired very well with every bite of the tenderloin.

GROUND BEEF KOOBIDEH Skewers of seasoned ground beef that are pretty similar to ground kebabs, but the Persian spices used to season the meat were sooo exotic. Nothing like I’ve had before!

GHORMEH SABZI I love this heart beef and herb stew, but I thought all the usual aromatic spices were missing their mark. It’s still a yummy dish, but was missing the fenugreek and different earthy herbs and spices that usually make this dish so wonderful. The beef could have been a little more tender. Disappointed I didn’t have a single piece of dried lime ball to make this dish more authentic and true to its roots. I think if you’ve never had this dish it’s definitely worth a try, but if you’re craving the rich and heartiness of Ghormeh Sabzi, I’d skip on this one.

All in all, dinner was a wonderful experience and definitely worth a try if you are finding yourself wanting Persian food...

We had dinner here recently, choosing Shiraz for both the convenience of the location for our party of 6, the overall quality of the Google reviews, and our wish to try Persian food, which is in less frequent rotation in our culinary explorations. We were seated in the back, so we had a relatively private dining experience, and the vibe in room was very nice between the lighting and the jazz being played. The food was terrific all around, starting with a mix of appetizers, the chicken soup, the mains (we sampled the lamb chops and 3 of the 4 stews on the menu on this evening, all very good), and the pistachio ice cream for dessert.

I am more prone to discussing individual dishes when writing reviews, but our experience this evening was more memorable for the customer service, so that is what I wanted to focus on here. As noted, we had a party of 6, and one of the entrées was forgotten during the service. So 5 of us had our dishes and we waited for the last one to come out. The waitstaff soon realized what had happened and got that order back into the kitchen. As that happened, the manager came over and told us that the meal (the entire meal, not just the missing entre!!!) would be comped. We thought this was a noble gesture but completely unnecessary--we would have been happy if he had comped the missing entrée and given a drink or dessert. But the manager insisted that what happened was unacceptable and he would not budge on this.

Nobody does this, at least not at the restaurants I usually eat at. Mistakes happen, and as I said, we would have been happy with a much lower-key reaction. I wish I had the manager's name; he gave a principled response that floored all of us sitting at the table, and it made us forever fans of this fine...

It's not a bad restaurant but it seems to have a bit of an identity crisis. The food is best described as "persianate" with a bit of central Asian influence. Everything was very high quality but much milder in flavor than typical Persian fare. The flavors are very clean and remind me of Uzbek and Turkmen food especially. Definitely order kabobs, the meat is excellent if a bit bland.

The service is very strange however. The wait staff is over attentive and constantly switching out plates and clearing things away. It's as if the food is supposed to be served in courses, except it's not, it's all very informal and generally eaten slowly all at once. They served us condiments as appetizers and cleared the plates before the actual dinner came. It's like the staff doesn't understand how the food is eaten, like imagine getting part of the condiments taken away before the meat is served. It was very strange.

The wine list is also excellent, however they use comically large wine glasses which make it feel like a bachelorette party. The plates are generally too small in size too, which adds to the comical quality of the wine glasses. It just doesn't look good together. It makes the food look less for the way it all comes together at the table.

This type of food could be fine dining if they could just figure out how to serve everything in a more...