Nasim Alikhani: Homestyle Iranian Food at Its Best
Food with Mark Bittman
Sweetness and Light
4.8 • 981 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Revisiting our interview with Nasim Alikhani, the wildly popular Brooklyn-based chef, who talked to Kate and Mark about why the slow cook makes Iranian food special, the best way to enjoy a dinner party, and leaving Iran for the US in the 1980s.
Get Nasim Alikhani’s recipe for Date Scrambled Eggs on the Bittman Project:
https://bittmanproject.com/recipe/nasim-alikhanis-date-scrambled-eggs/
Subscribe to Food with Mark Bittman on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen, and please help us grow by leaving us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts.
Follow Mark on Twitter at @bittman, and on Facebook and Instagram at @markbittman. Want more food content? Subscribe to The Bittman Project at www.bittmanproject.com.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Food with Mark Bitman. I'm Kate Bitman. Thanks for being here. We know how many of you are loyal |
| 0:09.9 | listeners and we appreciate that so much. If you'd like to hear more from Mark and me and our small but mighty team, |
| 0:17.0 | check us out on bitmanproject.com. When you subscribe there, you'll get access to our recipe database, which now has thousands of recipes, with more added weekly. |
| 0:27.5 | If you prefer a substack experience, we're on there, too, bitmanproject.substack.com. |
| 0:34.5 | Reach out to us with any questions, comments, or stuff you think should be featured on the podcast or on our site, food at markbitman.com. I was looking for an episode to rerun this week and realized that it's been almost three years since we interviewed the chef, Nassim Alikani, of the Iranian restaurant Sofrey in Brooklyn. |
| 1:13.6 | I can't think of a more apt time to revisit our conversation. |
| 1:18.7 | When we originally talked to Nassim, I hadn't been to Sofret, which is both a neighborhood |
| 1:23.4 | staple and a dining destination. It's one of those prized restaurants that's very hard |
| 1:29.3 | to get a table at, and now that I've been there, I understand why. The food is delicious, the space |
| 1:35.3 | is cozy and warm. It's not someone's home, but it feels homey. Nassim has been cooking all her life, |
| 1:41.8 | beginning early on alongside her mother in their home in |
| 1:44.6 | central Iran. She didn't set out to be a chef, though. She studied law in college and casually |
| 1:50.1 | cooked for her classmates. Her dream was to be a judge. Not surprisingly, in the 1980s, |
| 1:56.3 | after the new regime took over, Nassim's plans changed. Women's roles were diminished, textbooks |
| 2:02.7 | were purged, Nassim's mother was forced to retire because she wouldn't conform, and all |
| 2:08.8 | universities were closed, and certainly women were not allowed to be judges anymore. Nassim had |
| 2:14.7 | friends who were executed and imprisoned. She made the decision to leave Iran and come to America. |
| 2:21.6 | Fast forward to 2018. As a woman in her late 50s, Nassim did The Unthinkable. She opened a restaurant. |
| 2:31.0 | A restaurant that has since been named one of the top 10 best of the year by the New York |
| 2:35.1 | Times, a restaurant that got Nasim nominated for a James Beard for Best Chef. |
| 2:40.2 | Nassim's story is unique and, like her food, layered. You'll see what I mean by that. |
| 2:45.2 | And we had a great time talking with her. Here we are. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 11 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Sweetness and Light, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Sweetness and Light and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.