Gold Dig #2
Attari Sandwich Shop is in Westwood, in an area that is now recognized by the city as “Persian Square”, with an official sign and everything! It serves – you guessed it – Persian food of the sandwich variety. It is one of the cheaper places to frequentlly make Jonathan Gold’s 101 Best Restaurants list. And good thing too, because it’s cash only. The inside is largely just a walk-up counter where you order, so most people sit outside in the courtyard. A lot of the tables feel crooked like you’re sitting on a slant, but I really enjoyed sitting in the cute, sunny space.
I don’t normally comment on a restaurant’s website, especially since a surprising number of the places I’ve reviewed don’t have websites. To Attari Sandwich Shop’s credit, they do have a site. And I strongly encourage you to check it out. It is a one-page site. Just below the site header is an advertisement for a wedding photographer in Austin, Texas – it’s a link so it’s colored and underlined, making it one of the most eye-catching features of this mainly black text site. When I first went to the website, I thought I had gone to a site for some similarly named business in Austin. But something about this site that looks like it’s straight out of the ’90’s totally charmed me, and was a big part of the reason I chose to make Attari one of my first Gold Digging adventures.
The Dish
We went with the intention of getting the ab-goosht, a lamb and chickpea stew that Jonathan Gold raves about. Tragically, they only serve it on Fridays, and I went on a Tuesday. To be fair, both Jonathan Gold’s review and Attari’s website do note that ab-goosht is a Friday special. Poor planning and/or a total brain fart on my part. What we did get was the osh, beef tongue sandwich, kuku sabzi sandwich, and sholezard. I also have to note that due to this being one of my first Gold Digs, I was more focused on putting the food in my face than taking pics. I’m sure you noticed there are no photos of the sandwiches and only a half-eaten pic of the osh. I suppose that just means I have reasons to go back.
Osh
Osh is a thick green lentil soup. The presentation was nice with yogurt drizzled and crispy onion piled on top, but for eating I preferred to stir it all up so the creaminess of the yogurt mixed in and every bite had some crunchy bits. The osh comes with two pieces of their really good French bread. I only used the spoon after running out of bread to scoop up the soup with.
Beef Tongue Sandwich
This is the sandwich everyone says to get. I went to Attari with a friend who is not big on “weird” animal parts. Having grown up eating lots of “weird” Chinese food, tongue doesn’t freak me out. We agreed I would get the beef tongue sandwich and she would get a different sandwich. After trying a bite of mine, if she liked it we’d go halves. We went halves. She commented that the tongue just seemed like very tender beef. It was tasty, but not a life-changing sandwich for me.
Kuku Sabzi Sandwich
Kuku Sabzi is an egg and herb frittata, more heavy on the herb than the egg. My first bite tasted very fresh and green, but after awhile the flavor got a bit monotonous. I was satisfied that I only had a half of this sandwich.
Sholezard
Sholezard is rice pudding made with rose water and saffron, thus the bright golden color. It’s garnished with cinnamon and pistachio. I had never heard of it before, but there were a bunch of them in the counter display and they looked so appealing we had to try one. I’m glad we did. It was actually my favorite thing we had at Attari.
Bonus: Speaking of saffron and rose, just across the street from Attari is Saffron and Rose Ice Cream. We saw the sign as we were leaving and had to go. It’s important to have dessert after every meal! I got a scoop of the saffron and a scoop of the passionfruit. So good.