Ali Fakhrashrafi, the baby of the family, grew up watching his mother cook in Iran. When he and his wife Danielle Schrage decided to get out of publishing and launch a restaurant here in 2003, they skipped the kebabs in favour of fragrant stews.
Today, they have “the same motivation as we had from the beginning, that we represent Persian food that is more home-based, that you don’t find in the regular Persian restaurants,” Fakhrashrafi says, noting that a few spots in the northern GTA are now doing similar stews.
This summer, look out for the qormeh sabzi, a mint- and parsley-based sauce with lamb. “Always for me it was signalling summer, the smell of summer,” says Fakhrashrafi. Many dishes also incorporate fruits.
Schrage describes khoresht-e aloo beh, “a beautiful saffron sauce with a little bit of rose in it, cooked with Persian plums and almonds and meat, with sauteed quince overtop.”
Not all of the menu changes. Staples include mirza qasemi (smoky charred eggplant), fesenjoon (a vegan dish with walnut and pomegranate reduction) with mushrooms, and adas polo (rice pilaf) with braised lamb shank.
They’ve pieced some recipes together not just from cookbooks and memory, but from Persian memoirs and other historical documents. It’s a fitting touch in a restaurant elaborately decorated with Persian art and artifacts.
Pomegranate (420 College St.) is surprisingly affordable for the quality. Most mains are in the mid-$20s and bottles of wine are in the $30s.
The couple also runs Takht-e Tavoos (1120 College St.), a weekend brunch spot at College and Dufferin.
While they’re not going anywhere soon, they know succession planning is a big question for any family restaurant. They aren’t expecting their kids to take over, though Schrage says their daughter asked for her tenth birthday to be allowed to work there and later ran front-of-house. But their daughter has a different career now, and several of the chefs have already been there for 20 years.
Fakhrashrafi says they’re open to figuring out a plan that keeps the tradition going. Until then, he’ll be obsessively updating the menu.
This article appeared in the 2025 Summer issue.
