Iranian Food? In East Sheen?

I work in East Sheen, which is not exactly a hot bed of different cultures, cuisines and craziness - instead think of nice middle class couples with their 2.4 children and their 4 x 4's splattered in desginer mud bought at Harrods.

While I was lamenting the fact that I would have to grab a bus into Richmond to find an interesting place to write about for this blog - my collegaue told me 'oh no Helen, one moment please, before you completely write off East Sheen. I will take you to a wondrous place of Iranian loveliness were one can feast for the bargain price of £3.50!'

She had my attention!

So she took me one wet and wild Thursday afternoon to Faanoos (481 Upper Richmond Road West, SW14 7PU), an Iranian restaurant, where you can BYOB and dine quite cheaply, or more lavishly if the purse strings can cope.

As it was my first time, I was told I simply must sample the delights of the kebab. The £3.50 treat she had spoken about to tempt me to try this place. She went for chicken and I went for lamb, and I believe my eyes must have widened by at least a couple of cms when they brought the kebab beasts over to my table.




It was unlike any kebab I had seen before - large, handmade warm bread and deliciously cooked meat. My colleague had been right - it was a feast for the bargain price of £3.50. I quickly took two snaps of the food for your viewing pleasure - you are lucky, as the delicious fumes had already begun wafting towards my nose and I showed considerable restraint not to immediately tuck in.




The gigantic kebabs come equipped with equally gigantic pots of spicy tomato sauce and a garlic type mayonnaise delight. If on a hot date I would not recommend using either on your kebab, but as I was merely going to be breathing on my lovely but ' I don't want to throw you on my bed and have my wicked way with you' workmates, I had no such qualms about liberally spreading the sauces upon my kebab - this proved a wise move.



Now I had a food baby, a kebab baby to be more precise growing inside my expanding belly - but I was here on a mission - to sample the menu. A menu can never be really and truly sampled until one has tried the desserts - and I had never had Iranian desserts, so I thought 'why not'?

So I tried the most unusal dessert on the menu of course! Faloodeh, which is Persian dessert. It is a frozen dessert, a bit like a sorbet. It is rose ice mixed with thin vermicelli noodles that are frozen with corn starch and with some blackberry jam on top - the jam threw me too!

This is an intriguing dessert, and to be honest I am still unsure how I feel about it. I love 'rose' flavoured things, so this bit was tasty - but I couldn't shake the fact that there were noodles in the delicious rose ice and the blackberry jam - well this just seemed odd. Though this isn't anything against the restaurant, more my inability to believe that noodles are a pudding food.

If you are ever in the Richmond area while in London, then I would recommend taking that 5 minute bus ride from the Richmond centre into the delights of East Sheen and checking out the Faanoos. There is a lovely brick oven that bakes the most delicious bread - and the smell - oh Lord the smell :)