When Cody Ma and Misha Sesar opened Azizam as a pop-up in 2021, they were tapping into something Los Angeles had been missing: Persian home cooking that demanded real work. Now, after a three-year run of pop-ups that built a devoted following, the restaurant has landed permanently in Silver Lake, and the payoff is immediate. Bill Addison crowned it L.A.'s best new Persian restaurant in years, and the LA Times ranked it #21 on its 2024 list of 101 Best Restaurants. The accolade feels right.
Ma and Sesar, both half-Iranian and half-Chinese, understand the distinction that matters here. This is not the Persian restaurant of quick-fire kebabs and rice. Instead, Azizam specializes in the dishes that require patience—the kind of cooking that happens in home kitchens over hours, with mounds of fresh herbs, nuanced sauces, and stews built on layers of flavor. The Kofteh Tabrizi, a giant meatball, arrives as what Addison rightly called "the gateway dish"—a single, substantial orb of ground meat and herbs that announces the restaurant's commitment to dishes that take time and care.
The menu moves through Persian home cooking with precision. There's turmeric-braised chicken prepared as a dampokhtak, the kind of dish that rewards slow cooking with deep, complex flavor. Ash-e-jo, a barley soup, showcases the value placed on humble, labor-intensive preparation. A beef tongue sandwich and kuku sabzi sandwich demonstrate how the kitchen respects technique in every format, from stew to sandwich. This is cooking that respects tradition without genuflecting to it.
What distinguishes Azizam in a city with no shortage of Persian restaurants is this: Ma and Sesar have rejected the trap of simplification. They've built a menu around dishes that don't streamline easily, that demand the kind of attention home cooks give them. The result is food that tastes earned. In a restaurant landscape that often privileges speed and efficiency, Azizam's commitment to labor-intensive preparation feels like a small act of resistance. It's also delicious.