Komaaj Pila Bazaar — Restaurant in San Francisco

Persian food has been refined over 3000 years. Komaaj has turned it into a high end, gourmet experience at non-San francisco prices. Insanely good Persian food! The best I have ever sampled!

The menu is well balanced for vegan, vegetarians and carnivores alike. I wouldn’t be surprised if this place takes off like Beit Rima did 2 years ago.

I decided to sample a bunch of vegan and veggie dishes. And judging by the flavors and high-end presentation worthy of a Michelin star, I can only imagine the meat based dishes are exceptional.

1. Sumac roasted chickpeas - Comes with a slice of lemon. Light and perfectly spiced. Sumac doesn’t overpower.

2. Pomegranate & Walnut Stew with Turmeric Rice - holy cow. The flavors are insane. What I love is that this dish isn’t sweet or has one particular flavor that dominates your palette. It’s multi-noted, and the stew tickles your taste buds as the perfectly cooked rice provides the depth and texture to complete the dish.

3. Side Bread // sangak - think of this as pita chips on steroids. They act as a crunchy complement to the stews, salads and marinated veggies.

4. Cucumber Salad - this is also available with lettuce. Refreshing and a great palette cleanser. The flavors are clean and the light spices allow the cucumber to shine.

5. Sumac Roasted Eggplant - I have never tasted anything like this. The eggplant doesn’t taste starchy. Instead it gets a kebab like treatment. Pods well with the rice.

Overall my entire plate was a flavor bomb. This is a gem for 2021 and unless you try it soon, this place is likely to become very popular and have long wait lines. They have outdoor seating, and this being in a quiet mission neighborhood, has the ambience to make a great date night place.

Note: they are only open thu to Sunday. And close early by 8 pm. I ordered from the website before close and the food was ready. I appreciated how much care went into packaging and presentation. It survived a bike ride home.

Thank you Komaaj for giving me the best foodie experience of 2021! And all this for 40 busks!

I almost don’t want to recommend you to others for fear that you will become too popular. That’s a good problem to have during...

It’s hard to get it right!

I’m Persian and take great pride in Persian food. Our cuisine is vast and complex but unfortunately most of the real home-made recipes are extremely time consuming and not really feasible for commercial purposes.

Persian food is not simple and even the most basic recipes such as steam-cooked Rice, usually involve a multi-step process that can take up-to 24 hours to get it right.

This results in most Persian restaurants offering a somewhat similar menu usually consisting of Kababs (grilled meat and veggies), Rice, and a handful of popular Stews (Khoresh Gheymeh, Ghormeh Sabzi, etc). While I really enjoy most of these commonly offered items, I do believe that Persian food has a lot more to offer than what is currently available.

Which is the reason why I’m so impressed with Komaj. For the first time, I experienced a selection of unique, authentic, and well-executed regional recipes that previously required a trip to a particular region in Iran.

Their menu is carefully crafted and combinations are well coordinated. We ordered a few items and shared everything.

5/5 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ for food.

Also, I worked in service for many years and am well-aware of what goes into good costumer service. It’s definitely a lot more than a kind smile, a positive attitude, and a polite vocabulary. It’s about making the costumer feel at home and going out of your way to put a smile on their face. I left Komaj with a smile of pride and gratitude. That is good service!

Komaj got it right.

I will be back...

This meal underwhelmed. It’s started out strong and ended with both heavily over salted and under seasoned entrees. We got two glasses of frankly over priced Armenian Red wine, not sure what constituted the $25+ a glass price tag as I lack any real knowledge of Armenian wine. The Mazze platter was the highlight of the meal. No comments other than the bread should either be served crispy or untoasted. It was somewhere in between chewy and crispy, odd choice. The entrees really fell flat. We got the Salmon Belly(stay away), which was pretty close to inedible. It was the saltiest thing I’ve ever eaten. My idiot husband ate it as a challenge and is very much regretting the choice. lol. Can’t emphasize enough how salty the dish was. To be fair the host mentioned that it was a salty choice but that was a very big understatement. the beef stew, was okay. However the sauce was thin and watery and could have used some more time simmering. The beef was cooked well. Dare I say this dish could have used salt? The rice was over cooked to boot. Service was good until the entrees, then it seemed the server avoided us in anticipation of our disappointment until we’d reached the point of no return and dropped the check. Will not be returning. Super bummed by the experience. This Persian does...