400-Year-Old Street Food · Minced Lamb Sandwich
Beryan (Isfahani Beryani)
Photo: Reza babaeian / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Two 17th-century French travelers, Jean Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, both described beryani cookshops in Safavid Isfahan, though the version they saw, mutton roasted in an oven over rice, differed from today's minced one.
Lamb, traditionally including lung for texture, is boiled, minced and pounded fine, then seared in small round pans with a spoonful of fat and piled onto flatbread — usually sangak or taftoon — with cinnamon, fresh herbs, and a glass of doogh on the side. Beryani shops around Isfahan's old bazaar still run the tradition today.
Why it's made this way: Isfahanis trace the dish to the Safavid era, when the city was Persia's capital, and 17th-century European travelers described beryani cookshops there.
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