Sebastopol has a new Persian restaurant
And it's located inside Viva Mexicana
I’ve always liked Viva Mexicana, the Mexican restaurant on Main Street a few blocks south of downtown. In my mind, I call what they do “MexiCali” because owner Sima Mohamadian and her team have a creative California take on Mexican classics. Their Gratitude Burrito, which is a top seller, is a vegetarian wonder filled with refried beans, our shredded yam and potato mixed, corn salsa, pico de gallo salsa, guacamole, creamy jalapeno sauce.
How did a nice Iranian girl end up owning a Mexican restaurant?
“This place kind of fell in my lap,” Mohamadian said. “I had no restaurant background at all. I was not a waitress. I didn’t know anything, so I had to learn everything. I’d had other businesses before, but never this intense and never a restaurant. So I just threw myself into it, thinking that there must be a reason why I’m doing this. And that’s kind of what happened.”
That was 14 years ago. Over the years, she’s continued to innovate—adding new items to the menu that quickly became favorites—like the butternut squash enchilada and the empenochada, a kind of Mexican lasagna with corn tortillas instead of pasta. She expanded the vegetarian options (this is Sebastopol, after all). All the while, the restaurant cleaved closely to traditional Mexican fare.
Over the past few years, however, there were hints that her Persian heritage was calling her home. A few years ago, she added a little Persian bodega to the corner of the restaurant, stocking hard-to-find Persian ingredients like Persian Rosewater Syrup. For a while now, she’s been offering Persian cooking classes.
Then last month, she made the leap and created a little Persian pop-up restaurant at Viva Mexicana on Monday and Tuesday nights. Recently she added Wednesday as well. It’s been a big hit.
“I am keeping it really authentic and seasonal,” she said. “I don’t think it’s a typical Persian restaurant experience, because I’m catering to people that have never had Persian food, right? And so I created a menu that is more of a tapas style, so they can pick different things to share with their friends, taste it, and see what they like. Everyone’s been having a lot of fun tasting all the different foods.”
Mohamadian said that, aside from a few kabob shops, hers is the only Persian restaurant in Sonoma County, and recently, local Iranians, members of the Persian diaspora, are finding their way to her as well.
Since it’s winter, the menu is leaning on rich, warming Persian stews.
“Persian food is very much connected to health and well-being,” Mohamadian said. “There is something called Iranian holistic medicine. It’s sort of like the Buddhist Ayurveda, where there’s the temperament of foods—cold and hot—and balancing them to give you optimal health. So Persian food really embodies that.”
“I remember, even as a child, my mother would always tell me, like, ‘This benefits this. This benefits that.” I learned from a young age that food is medicine, and it meant a lot to me,” she said.
She said her staff is working really hard, learning new recipes and Persian techniques. Mohamadian would like to add a weekend day sometime soon—and make the Persian pop-up permanent—but as a savvy business person, she’s waiting to see how her audience responds and whether this concept has legs.
She is hoping it does because it’s been a kind of homecoming for her. “We are hoping to do it forever,” she said.
See all of Viva Mexicana’s offerings—Persian and Mexican—on its website.
A new Persian restaurant? And you wonder why Sebastopolians all go to Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park or Windsor for restaurants. Stop all the New Age nonsense, the endless crystal shops, weird massage parlors and weird foreign food and locals will shop in Sebastopol again.
I have always loved this place. Ate there yesterday and look forward to trying the Persian food soon!