On a recent Sunday afternoon in Cafe Nadery, the Iranian cafe and social space that opened last summer in New York’s Greenwich Village, young Iranian-Americans were perched at the bar, thumbing through their phones, reading, Skyping on iPads and drinking glasses of Persian tea (refills are just a dollar; Dh3.7). A table of middle-aged patrons laugh raucously; elsewhere a young family and a couple play backgammon. Conversation can be heard in at least three languages.
Nadery isn’t the first place to serve New Yorkers Persian food, but it’s the first to do so while prioritising a lively, intellectual atmosphere over financial profit. Taking inspiration from its Tehran namesake, an icon of Iranian coffee-house culture where philosophy and art would be chewed over by literary luminaries in the 1940s and 1950s, the cafe hosts events almost every night. These range from oud and kamancheh recitals to poetry nights, art exhibitions, football matches, discussions in Farsi and even the Super Bowl.
“We are not looking to get people inside and then get them out so the next person can come in,” says Nahzi Nikki, one of the 21-strong collective of shareholders who own the cafe. “Our philosophy is quite the opposite: to have a gathering place. That is why it will not necessarily be a huge business success, because that was never our aim. We are hoping to be a huge cultural success.”
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Cafe Nadery: A taste of Tehran in New York
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