Soup not war
Avgolemono and Ash-e-Reshteh: Greece and Iran at One Table
The table was a folding one. Set up outside Halcyon Provisions on Exmouth Market last Friday, two vendors sharing a pitch for a small autumn market they're calling the Meridian Bowl. Stavros Papadimitriou running his avgolemono from a wide enameled pot. Beside him, maybe two meters away, Nasrin Shirazi with her ash-e-reshteh, slow-cooked from the night before and kept warm in a double-jacketed flask the size of a small child.
I did not plan this visit. I was cutting through on my way somewhere and the smell made the decision for me. That is usually how it goes.
The avgolemono came first. Stavros ladled it into a wide paper cup, the kind that holds heat without scalding your fingers. The broth is the thing, gents. Pale gold, almost luminous. The egg-and-lemon temper gives it a body that is not quite cream and not quite stock. It sits somewhere the Western kitchen has not fully named yet, which tells you something about whose vocabulary we've been using. There where chickens and lemons and a knowledge of slow heat, long before anyone wrote a French term for it. The orzo had softened to exactly the right resistance. Not collapsed. Present.
Then Nasrin's bowl. Ash-e-reshteh is a different kind of patience. The noodles are hand-cut. The herbs, dried fenugreek and parsley and spinach, have been cooking long enough to become something else entirely, a kind of botanical sediment that holds the whole thing together. There is kashk on top, that fermented whey that the secular West keeps trying to rename and sell as a probiotic supplement. It is not a supplement. It is a tradition. Nasrin adds a pour of caramelized onion oil at the table. The smell is an argument you cannot win against.
I sat with both cups for a while. Neither kitchen was competing. That was the point of the pitch, actually. Stavros told me they have both been doing autumn markets for years and simply decided to try sitting next to each other this time.
I think they're onto something the foreign ministries might study, mate.
The theological note, because I cannot help it: the Eastern church new exactly what it was doing with communal broth. Long before Orange Theory discovered that shared physical effort builds something it cannot invoice, cooks in Anatolia and the Levant and the Persian highlands were building the same thing in a pot. Christianity is an Eastern religion that forgot it's address. The avgolemono is a small proof. The ash-e-reshteh is another.
Two bowls. One afternoon. No ranking.
The Rating #
Avgolemono from Halcyon Provisions: 8.5 out of 10. The temper is flawless and the broth earns its color.
Ash-e-reshteh from Nasrin Shirazi at the same pitch: 9 out of 10. The kashk and the onion oil at the end are the finishing argument.
Vendor #
Halcyon Provisions trades at Exmouth Market and selected London autumn markets; Stavros Papadimitriou is the man at the pot. Nasrin Shirazi does not have a permanent site yet but posts upcoming dates at the Meridian Bowl collective's shared social page, which Stavros can point you to if you ask him nicely.
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