This article is part of FT Globetrotter’s guide to Vancouver
There is something about North Vancouver that reminds many Iranians of Tehran.
When immigrants like my mother arrived in this sleepy, mountainous suburb in the years following the Iranian revolution in 1979, the backdrop of dramatic peaks over low-rise buildings could make it feel like you were looking at the Alborz mountains (with a bit of imagination, I am told). In the decades since, the mountains have stayed put and thousands of Iranians have migrated to the region, making it more and more like a rendition of home.
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Walk down some streets and chances are that you’ll hear Persian spoken as much (if not more) than English. According to the most recent census in 2021, it was the most common non-official language here. Since then, the community has only grown, aided by programmes that made it possible for Iranian visitors to stay in the country and obtain work permits in light of what the Canadian government called “gross and systematic human rights violations committed by the Iranian regime” after its crackdown on protesters in 2022.
If you want to understand how Canada has become a home to so many immigrant communities, a walk along North Vancouver’s central Lonsdale Avenue is a great place to start. It is where I spent most of my childhood, wandering the aisles of the Iranian grocery store and picking sweets from behind the bakery counters. Each time I return, I am struck by how the community continues to grow. There’s a rich history here dating back decades, and a vibrant surge brought by newer arrivals. At times, it feels like their different memories of Iran merge on these streets. Also, there is a lot of good food.
Start breakfast or brunch at the family-run Kolbeh, located on a corner across from Victoria Park, which opened in 1992. Back then, now-owner Moe Farokhi was a high-school student helping his parents behind the counter.
I have been coming to Kolbeh since I was little, and it has barely changed: simple wooden tables and chairs, a chalkboard menu written in English and Persian, a TV in the corner playing 2000s Iranian pop on a loop and a hand-painted mural depicting “memories of Iran”, which they had sent over from the city of Isfahan. Farokhi says they go to great lengths to ensure that the quality of the food and atmosphere of the restaurant stay consistent and comforting: “Someone who has been coming for 20, 30 years can say, ‘The taste is still exactly the same.’”
The restaurant has a “feeling of home” that is especially important for those who don’t have family nearby, says Farokhi, smiling proudly. “A lot of people find their jobs here, their place to live — some have even found their boyfriends and girlfriends here.”
At Kolbeh, the kale pache is renowned and sells out daily. A breakfast food — and hangover cure — it consists of sheep’s head (kale) and feet (pache) in a flavourful, fatty broth. Farokhi recommends eating it with a dash of cinnamon, chilli powder, a few drops of lemon juice and warm flatbread on the side. Also excellent are the halim, shredded lamb porridge dusted with cinnamon, and the vegetarian ash reshteh, a noodle soup with herbs and legumes, topped with kashk (a whey-like fermented dairy) and heaps of caramelised onions. Round them off with some tea and continue on your walk.
A little further up the street, you’ll find Ayoub’s, an ornately decorated dried fruit and nut shop that first opened here in the neighbourhood and now has seven outposts across British Columbia. It’s a great place to get gift boxes of pistachios or sohan, a saffron toffee brittle. My favourite is the zereshk: dried barberries with a sweet-and-sour taste, usually served on rice.
From here, more signs of Little Tehran start to reveal themselves — quite literally, as most signs are in English and Persian. But underlying it all is also a sense that politics are never far away. Advertisements for immigration advisers are plentiful, as are money-exchange shops for sending funds abroad. When I introduce myself as a journalist, some people are hesitant to speak and suspicious of my intentions.
The interactions are a reminder that, since the revolution, this is a community that has known surveillance, mass arrests, executions and the targeting of dissidents abroad. But recent tragedies in Iran have touched North Vancouver closely as well. Seven people killed on the Ukraine Airlines Flight 752 that was hit by missiles shortly after taking off from Tehran in 2020 were residents of the North Shore. The entire community was in mourning, and a shrine was set up outside the beloved Amir Bakery, whose owner lost his wife and daughter on the flight.
The new owner, Shahnaz Oleh, is a bubbly woman who tells me the bakery remains the only one of its kind in Vancouver to make traditional Iranian breads, like taftoon and barbari, entirely by hand. It’s a costly and time-consuming process, but a worthwhile effort. She even has customers who tell her they can’t get bread like this in Iran.
For a drink, retreat to Mashti Café, which describes itself as “the first Iranian juice and ice-cream bar in British Columbia”. Since opening last spring, it has become a gathering place for the community into the late hours of the night. The menu includes specialities like shir-e pesteh, a smoothie made with milk, ice cream and pistachios, and majoon, an ice-cream shake packed with dates, cashews, pistachios, walnuts, honey, rosewater, banana and cream.
Café manager Mahsa Khorsandi says meeting people who tell her Mashti’s drinks remind them of Iran is a “beautiful” part of the job. “We had one customer come and say, ‘It’s been 20 years since I’ve had shir-e pesteh,’” she recalls.
Finding these tastes of home is particularly special because some people here, like my own family, cannot go back to Iran. “I don’t want to upset you,” says Elham, a woman who works in the local pharmacy and bakery. “But in the cemetery here, there are many Iranians who passed away and who never thought they would die here.”
For Khorsandi, who immigrated more recently, the tree-lined streets of Lonsdale are a pleasant reminder of Tehran’s main commercial street, Valiasr. Going to the local Walmart makes her think she’s in Shahrvand, an Iranian supermarket chain. The pressures of immigration are reduced in a neighbourhood with so many immigrants, she says: “You really think you’re on the streets of Iran.”
I later ask Minoo, a day-care owner who arrived in 1989 while she was pregnant with her daughter, how it feels to now see places like Mashti bustling at night. She says it makes her happy to watch young people chatting away as her early days were lonelier; there was “nothing” open past 8pm, and they had to assimilate quickly. “Now, even if you walk on Lonsdale at midnight, it’s full of light,” she says.
But it’s also not easy to connect with fellow Iranians who have arrived more recently. They eat the same food, share traditions and come from the same country, but are separated by 30-plus years of life. “We are so different,” she reflects. “Over these years, we grew up with the rules of Canada.”
Two doors down from Mashti is an unassuming entryway leading to a narrow set of stairs. Go up to find the Nima Bookstore, the neighbourhood’s only Persian-language bookshop. It’s a humble room lined with bookshelves, with a poster of Forugh Farrokhzad, the Iranian poet who radically wrote about the inner lives of women in the 1950s and ’60s, taped to the counter. One of her lines is printed on it: “Oh life, it’s me who is still filled with all your emptiness.”
Owner “Nima” (who does not want to give his real name) opened the shop in 2001 for “the one per cent of people who care for reading and to raise awareness in the other 99 per cent”. Nowadays, he adds, most of that one per cent are young women. It’s worth popping in to chat with his ever-rotating cast of companions (on my visit, I meet an artist and an immigration attorney) or to purchase some of the handicrafts on display.
For dinner, head to Akbar Joojeh, where elaborate stained-glass chandeliers hang from the ceilings, the wait staff are dressed in traditional Iranian waistcoats and the tables are covered with Persian rug place mats. Giant flatscreen TVs flick between menu items. It’s a jovial atmosphere, albeit a little overstimulating. But it is famed for its namesake dish, akbar joojeh, a traditional meal from northern Iran: a small chicken, served whole and fried until the skin is crispy, served with pomegranate sauce to drizzle over it and enough rice to feed a small family. When the restaurant opened two years ago, it was the first to make akbar joojeh in Vancouver, and its popularity has surged since. (There is a second location just three blocks away.) The starters, best enjoyed with the hot bread that will keep magically appearing at your table, are also excellent: mirza ghasemi, smoky aubergine topped with an egg, and mast-o-moosir, a creamy yoghurt made with shallots.
You might be too full for dessert, but it would be remiss to visit North Vancouver without picking up some traditional Iranian sweets to enjoy later. Walk another block and you’ll be at Laleh Bakery, where most items are sold by weight. Might I suggest bamieh, little balls of fried dough covered with a sticky saffron and rosewater syrup? Or pirashki, which shares a name with its eastern European counterpart but is filled with custard and glazed with rosewater syrup? According to my dad, they taste just like the ones he’d have after school.
Have you explored Vancouver’s Little Tehran district? Tell us about it in the comments below. And follow FT Globetrotter on Instagram at @FTGlobetrotter
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