Correction: This story has been updated to include both of Food2Door's business partners and their roles in the community.
You might have found her at a booth at Tucson Meet Yourself, her counter a cubbyhole tucked between bigger tents. You might have seen her exquisite saffron and pistachio ice cream in an eight-ounce deli container in a freezer at Caravan Mideastern Foods.
But on a given day, you’ll most likely find her working off-hours in a restaurant kitchen, washing and preparing fresh green herbs and watching over elaborate stews, or delivering her meals to households in Tucson’s Persian community.
Shadi Hosseini is one of the two people behind Food2Door Catering, a company that makes Iranian specialties from scratch, for events as daily as meal prep and as elaborate as a 100-person wedding (“A small wedding, at least for Persians,” she said).
Unless you’re part of her community, her meals might taste different than what you’ve had in Tucson. Persian food is hard to find here — there’s a fine-dining restaurant near Oro Valley called Persian Room, and an upcoming caterer called Persian Table — but mostly, if Tucsonans want Persian food, we cook it ourselves, with spices and ingredients sourced from specialty shops like Caravan or Babylon Market.
Shadi founded Food2Door with a friend Kiana Mojahed, another woman and wife in Tucson’s Persian community, on a lark. They knew that Persian food was mostly home-cooked in Tucson and wanted to make traditional meals more accessible for those who might not have time to prepare elaborate meals themselves. Still, they didn’t anticipate just how needed their service was.
“We started joking around, coming up with a catering company and cooking for the Persian community here. The joke got serious, and before we knew it, we’re an established catering company, basically," she said.
Arguably the most iconic Persian dish, ghormeh sabzi ($13.99) is a stew made with fresh herbs, tender kidney beans and lamb.
The heart of Food2Door’s extensive menu is their ghormeh sabzi: a stew that is abundantly flavored with green herbs and tangy dried limes, studded with tender cuts of lamb and kidney beans more supple and rich than any I’ve had before.
“It has a really specific taste — once you have that stew, you’ll never forget about it,” Shadi said. “The taste will always be in your mouth and your thoughts. A good one. It has to be homemade.”
Other must-tries are the pistachio-saffron ice cream and familiar, yet uniquely spiced, kabob. The large menu encompasses Iranian cuisine from nationally popular dishes like the hearty gheimeh stew, made with lamb and split peas, and tahdig (golden pan-fried rice), to regional specialties like the Qazvini saffron pudding called mishkofi. Orders must be made online or by phone (520-333-2526) three days in advance (seven for a larger event), because everything is made fresh.
Like many cuisines, fresh ingredients like herbs and produce are essential to Persian cooking. The difference might be in how essential those herbs are to cooking: the base of ghormeh sabzi is not made of broth or cream, but of herbs, which are called sabzi in Farsi, the Persian language. Flat leaf parsley, fenugreek leaves, chives and cilantro are central to the recipe, along with dried limes.
Food2Door's Persian-style baklava ($3.99) comes with two pistachio nests as well.
“Persian food will take so long to make. The process is so long. Mainly, if you want to make good Persian food, everything has to be fresh,” Shadi said. “Every meal that we make is for that specific order. So almost nothing is frozen; nothing is pre-made.”
Shadi learned these labors of love in her mother’s kitchen. Her mom is a cook, and though the family moved from Iran to LA when Shadi was 12, she taught Shadi the traditional ways of Iranian cooking: especially her care for fresh herbs.
While you can grow or buy and then process these ingredients yourself, many cooks strapped on time will buy them dried from companies like Sadaf. This shortcut is precious, especially in more Americanized households that might not have a grandma or stay-at-home mom to spend the day cooking. But the shortcut makes less delicious food, which can lead families to stray from culturally significant recipes.
“It’s very difficult for you to go and buy [herbs], clean [them], dry [them], cut and chop, so Persians, females that work, it’s really hard,” Shadi said. “I actually used to prepare fresh herbs, ready to go for my own family and my in-laws ... Now Caravan carries our fresh herbs for different food. We’re going to take some to Babylon next week.”
Tahdig is a traditional Iranian specialty made of golden, pan-fried rice. Food2Door's tahdig ($9.99) is garnished with barberries and pistachios.
Because there is only one Persian restaurant in Tucson, and it’s mainly for special occasions, Food2Door’s catering service is one of the only convenient ways to eat fresh Persian food.
“For some reason, the Persian community here, or the way our lifestyle is here, our catering is going toward meal preps,” Shadi said.
“There is a family of Persians who live on the east side. A husband and wife, both doctors, who work full-time and have two boys, just like me. [They’re] almost the same age as well. They’re customers, but when I'm at their house I feel like I’m feeding my own kids,” Shadi said.
She delivers the food herself, with her partner Kiana and children in tow.
“Even if it’s almost an hour, 45-minute drive ... It’s a day trip for us. I pack food, I sit back and we sit and dance. My son says, we’re going to your work ... It’s a fun thing for us to do as well.”
Great holiday recipes start with great water!
Restaurants, breweries and coffee shops know that clean, pure water is crucial. You can get that at home too with Kinetico Quality Water. Kinetico removes more contaminants than any other system. Get up to $500 off a non-electric, high efficiency, patented Kinetico system (restrictions apply). Visit KineticoTucson.com.
What does "supported by" mean? Click here to learn more.
