Nannaa Persian Eatery

A Chicken Tachin at Nannaa comes out as a saffron-crusted wedge of rice, layered with chicken, barberries and almonds and set beside a yogurt shallot sauce — a dish built on patience and a family's recipe. The Nannaa Fries arrive from the other direction: hand-cut, tossed with spice and Persian blue salt, finished with a sumac-and-mint aioli, comfort food run through a Persian pantry. A single counter on King Street West in Westdale sends out both, and the gap between a slow saffron rice and a paper cone of seasoned fries is the one this menu was built to hold.

The traditional lane runs deep. Fesenjoon braises chicken with butternut squash in pomegranate molasses and ground walnut, rich and faintly sweet; Ghormeh Sabzi simmers beef and romano beans in a seven-herb stew sharpened with dried lemon; Dahl Addas works potato, cauliflower and lentil with tomato and tamarind. Each lands on saffron-infused rice. The grill answers with Koobideh, two skewers of in-house ground beef brisket worked to the restaurant's own recipe, and Barg, thin strips of marinated tenderloin. The lamb shank comes the slowest of all, braised until it slides off the bone over a dill-and-broad-bean basmati.

Then the menu turns the corner. Nannaa Fries are the gateway, but the crossover goes further: Koobideh Poutine buries fresh curds under that same brisket kabob and a beef gravy; Pulled Lamb Tacos fold slow-braised lamb with red cabbage, Persian pickles and the house aioli; a Poutine Supreme runs the idea to its conclusion. These are not novelties bolted onto a Persian board — they take the kitchen's own grill work and pour it into a Canadian comfort-food mould. The eggplant-and-mushroom Tachin does the reverse, giving the saffron-rice signature a vegetarian twin without losing the barberries and almonds.

What holds the two halves together is confidence rather than novelty. A kitchen reaches for Koobideh Poutine only when it already trusts its Koobideh, and Nannaa's crossovers read as a cook improvising on dishes he knows cold rather than chasing a trend. The name points the same way home — nannaa is mint, the herb that recurs across the table, in the lemon-dressed Salad Shirazi, folded into Kashkeh Bademjoon's smoky yogurt-and-eggplant starter, brightening the aioli on the fries. The vegetarian side has real shape, too, built around Dahl Addas and the eggplant Tachin as mains rather than a token salad. The whole menu is halal, which lets a wide Westdale crowd — students, families, the lunch trade off King Street — read it without watering anything down.

The story behind the counter is a family one. Mohammad Emami built Nannaa around his mother's Persian cooking, opening in Westdale in 2018 and giving the place a name that carries the kitchen it came from. Local reporting at the time framed the project as legacy as much as livelihood — good food as the thing a family means to leave behind. Emami has stayed a public face for the business since, taking a seat on the Westdale Village business association's board as the neighbourhood's restaurants worked through the lean pandemic years. The fast-casual format is the practical translation of that inheritance: home-style dishes a newcomer can reach without ceremony, ordered at a counter rather than waited on.

Day to day, the menu doubles as a calendar. Mondays drop the two-skewer Koobideh plate; Tuesdays turn Tachin into a feature, chicken or the eggplant version; Wednesdays put the Poutine Supreme within reach; Thursdays send a free dip out with any grill order. There is no reservation line to work — Nannaa runs on counter service, takeout and its own online ordering — so a regular's version of the place is a standing weekly order rather than a booked table. In the back the saffron rice still takes its hours; out front the fries still come fast and dusted Persian blue. Most weeknights, a Westdale table ends up ordering some of each.