LA’s Favorite Casual Persian Restaurant Where Visitors Always Find Excellent Mezeh And Flavorful Eggplant Geimeh | Mashed

A welcoming introduction to Persian food

The writer’s visiting guests have often ranked meals at Azizam among the best experiences of their Los Angeles trips. The restaurant’s fresh, flavorful dishes have introduced many of them to Persian food.

Azizam has also become a regular destination for the writer when friends and family visit. On the drive to Burbank airport, they recall favorite dishes from their meals there.

Mezeh and eggplant gheimeh

The menu’s mezeh section offers small plates served with barbari bread and pickles. Favorites include wild shallot yogurt and a fresh herb plate with vegetables and feta. Eggplant gheimeh pairs tender eggplant with split pea and tomato stew, rice, and potato sticks. Maman’s fried potatoes are crisp squares seasoned with bright sumac, while tahchin, when offered as a daily special, is saffron-spiced rice crisped at the edges.

A Silver Lake dining stop

About 600,000 Persians live in Los Angeles, with most of the community in Westwood. The writer says the distance makes Persian food less accessible, while nearby Glendale offers Armenian food.

Azizam is on a bend of Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. Diners order at the counter, take a number to their seats, and can linger over a pomegranate radler and Persian cream puff; the restaurant does not accept reservations for small parties.

More than kabobs

The writer, a vegetarian, says many Persian restaurants they have visited offer limited meat-free choices because their menus focus on kabobs. Azizam emphasizes that Persian cuisine includes more than kabobs.

Owners Cody Ma and Misha Sesar draw on the Persian home cooking of their youth. The writer describes the dishes as deeply satisfying and reminiscent of time-intensive meals shared by an Iranian friend.