, and Sesar is a director at an art gallery. The couple met at a party in 2016 through a mutual friend who knew they both had Iranian and Chinese parentage.
They were telling me the story in a recent interview. Ma started: “It’s pretty unique because we’ve never met anyone …”Like many pandemic-era creative sparks, the idea for Azizam started with bread. Ma and Sesar lived in Alhambra at the time, and the drive to nexuses of Iranian restaurants and markets like Westwood and Irvine felt far in 2020.
Ma and Sesar tinkered with kofteh Tabrizi, a soft braised meatball plumped with rice and seasoned with varying combinations of herbs, fruits and sometimes eggs that can be formed as big as a bike helmet. A modest-size version stuffed with dried stone fruits became one of Azizam’s staples.
It’s the seasonality of the cooking that compels me to seek out Azizam whenever they announce their next pop-up on
I hear some locals are making the same cuisine when cleaning a mower’s under carriage.