AT GLATT KOSHER PERSIAN RESTAURANT SHIRAZ, EVERY TABLE IS FAMILY
Lamb sizzles over hot coals. Tahdig crackles at the bottom of the pot. A table piled high with fragrant rice, smoky kebabs, and little dishes of torshi and fresh herbs. The scene is familiar — you could be at your grandmother’s house in Tashkent. And yet, you’re in Great Neck, Long Island. At Shiraz Restaurant (770 Middle Neck Road), you are completely, unmistakably, home.
For fifteen years, Mordechai Chaimzadegan has been the quiet heart of this beloved institution. Born in Tehran, he came to America about forty years ago carrying little more than his father’s work ethic and a deep love of good food. He is a shy man — but not so when he talks about the food he serves:
“People say we have the best meat in Great Neck. We use Grade A meat and focus on quality. Customers tell me we’re number one,” says Mordechai.
Mordechai started the restaurant together with his father — a man whose work ethic he has carried all his life. Over the decades, the menu has grown and evolved, always tested and refined before anything earns a permanent place. “We test everything before it stays on the menu,” he explains. “People know us for Persian food, but we also serve steak, lamb chops, schnitzel, shawarma—and Mediterranean cuisine.”
SHARED LANGUAGE, SHARED CULTURE
Iranian Jews and Bukharian Jews are not the same people—but spend an evening at Shiraz and you will feel something unmistakable: kinship. Both communities trace their roots to the great Persian-Jewish civilization that stretched across Central Asia for centuries. Both carry the same love of rice cooked to perfection, slow-roasted meats, and hospitality as a sacred duty. When the saffron-golden pilaf arrives at your table, something deep in the soul says: this is ours too.
The Aminov family from Rego Park made Shiraz their celebration restaurant. “We wanted somewhere that truly understood what a real feast looks like,” says the Aminov’s. “They brought out a whole roasted lamb on a platter and the whole restaurant cheered. My mother cried. It was the most beautiful dinner we’ve ever had.”
The Nektalov family from Forest Hills felt it too: “The lamb, the rice, the way they treated us — it reminded us of Shabbat at my parents’ house in Samarkand. Different country, same heart.”
Even the Cohen family, Ashkenazi through and through, makes the drive from New Jersey every month. “My husband had never really eaten Persian food,” says Rachel Cohen. “Within five minutes of the food arriving, he turned to me and said: ‘Why haven’t we been coming here for years?’ Now our kids are obsessed with the tahdig.”
The anecdotes are validated online. Nora Joon gave it a 5-star review on Google: “One of the best Glatt Kosher Iranian restaurants in town! The meat is fresh, the place is spotless, and the staff [is] extremely welcoming.”
The menu spans the full range of Persian kebabs — melt-in-your-mouth barg, juicy beef kobideh, chicken fragrant with lemon and garlic — alongside lamb chops, steak, schnitzel, shawarma and Mediterranean fare. The appetizers alone could fill a meal: crispy rice with lentils, silky hummus, pickled vegetables bright with spice. And the portions are legendary.
“They feed their clients with very generous portions and welcome people with sincerity and hospitality,” writes one diner on TripAdvisor.
PERSIAN JOY
Shiraz is also a destination for life’s biggest moments. The restaurant seats up to 160 guests, and for standing events — weddings, mangal barbecues, celebration gatherings — Mordechai has hosted 200 or even 300 people at a time. The centerpiece of many of these evenings? A whole lamb, slow-roasted and brought to the table on a platter. “Persians love it. Bukharian customers definitely love it,” he says. It is a spectacle — and a memory that guests carry home long after the last dish has been cleared.
Shiraz is Beth Yosef Glatt Kosher — the standard Sephardic and Bukharian families know and trust. “People in town know my family. They know we keep everything 100% strict,” says Mordechai.
That trust runs deep in Great Neck, where the Persian Jewish community has grown steadily for over three decades — not just in numbers, but in religious life. When asked how many Persian synagogues there are, he quipped, “I could almost say, ‘Too many!’” It is a community that has put down roots, built institutions, and made this affluent corner of Long Island its own. Shiraz is part of that story.
A SEAT AT THE TABLE
Great Neck is just 30 minutes from Queens — a smooth drive into a town where a Bukharian family can arrive as strangers and leave feeling like regulars. It’s also the perfect stopover en route to the Hamptons. To support Shiraz is not just to enjoy a remarkable meal. It is to say to Mordechai: we see you, we honor you, we are with you—as neighbors, as brothers, as family!
Mordechai has his eye on the future, too. He wants to see a younger crowd come through the door—people who want a real night out, good food, and a table full of energy. Are young Bukharians the answer to his wish?
Bring your parents. Bring your children. And when the food arrives—abundant and fragrant and cooked with decades of love—let yourself feel what every family who has discovered Shiraz already knows: this table was set for you.