I have a confession to make. Cooking Persian food intimidates me (…excuse me while I answer a dozen horrified texts from my Iranian mother who will never forgive me for this public admission). 

Doing justice to centuries-old recipes (and generations of tweaks by grandmothers and aunts who could go toe-to-toe with professional chefs on any given day) is labor-intensive and time-consuming. And the margin of error is slim to none. Trust me, I am an expert on exactly how non-existent that margin can be.

But when executed properly, Iranian cuisine is truly a feast for the senses that is hard to describe with mere words. It’s an experience.

Now Maziar and Shahab Farivar, the longtime D.C. restaurateurs behind Georgetown’s iconic Peacock Café, want to make that experience a part of the city’s thriving dining scene. Vintage78, their new restaurant in the former Scion Restaurant location in Dupont Circle, is a celebration of the tastes, aromas, and elaborate preparations of Persian cuisine, beyond the chargrilled chicken and beef kababs that many non-Iranians might associate with the region.

“I wanted to offer something beyond the dishes we grew up with, and I wanted to show that our cuisine is way more than kababs,” says Maziar. For example: “We have lots of vegetarians in the community now, so I made a fava bean burger with lots of herbs in it instead of using corn and tofu and tomato like I do at Peacock Café. I introduced the flavors of Persian cuisine into some foods that may otherwise be an everyday kind of item.”

The menu at Vintage78—named after the year the brothers emigrated from Iran as teenagers—puts chef Maziar’s modern twist on family recipes and regional Persian fare. The result may surprise not just newcomers to the cuisine, but also Iranian diners with predetermined expectations for the khoreshts (slow-simmered stews), jeweled rice dishes, soups, and side dishes they grew up eating at the family dinner table. 

Even the single kabab entrée on the menu has a twist: Farivar has paired a combination of grilled beef and chicken kababs with tahchin, a baked golden crisp rice casserole, rather than the traditional mound of saffron basmati rice. 

“I make a kufteh Azari—most people know it as kufteh Tabrizi, but we’re from Azerbaijan so I call it kufteh Azari—it’s one individual large meatball stuffed with a hardboiled egg, walnuts and barberries,” says Maziar. “I don’t think you can get that anywhere in this area, so why not do that instead of just offering a different combination of kababs?”

Maziar has reimagined plenty of traditional Persian comfort food like kuku (a light and airy vegetable frittata filled with fresh herbs) and kotlet (beef and potato patties) as mezze-style small plates. He also experiments with unconventional flairs like a lubia polo (rice layered with green beans cooked in tomato sauce and herbs) replacing the traditional ground beef with a braised veal shank.

Unlike Los Angeles, New York City, Toronto, Montreal, and Atlanta, D.C. hasn’t had a long-standing, fine dining Iranian restaurant in the city itself in decades—the suburbs have fared better—and Maziar credits that to the District’s mainstay industry: politics.

“Because of the political conflicts between our governments, we haven’t had many restaurateurs in the Iranian diaspora here who have been willing to associate‘Persian food’ with their brand,” says Maziar. “Hopefully we can make a dent in that.”

The brothers tested the appetite of D.C. diners for their unique take on Persian cuisine by featuring weekly three-course Persian pop-up menus at Peacock Café over the past few years. The dishes were so well received that several of them have become permanent additions to the dinner menu at Peacock Café. That enthusiasm from long-time patrons and other diners curious to try Persian food beyond the standard kabab fare is what the Farivars are hoping to harness at Vintage78, they say.

“My impression has been over the last few years that people are willing to taste what we want to cook for them,” says Maziar.

The space itself lives up to the restaurant’s tagline, “Persian cuisine, modern setting.” In fact, other than the signage on the widows, there is nothing about the minimalist and muted interior décor to suggest that the restaurant is specializing in “elevated Persian cuisine.” Not inundating the space with an Iranian or Middle Eastern motif was a conscious design choice, according to Shahab.

“Maziar and I wanted to do something that’s us,” says Shahab. “Of course, we’re proud of our heritage, but the décor mirrors us—it’s modern, it’s homey, it’s comfortable.Mind you, you’ll find plenty of restaurants in Tehran that have very unique and modern décor.”

The bar menu will soon feature cocktails inspired by ingredients that are staples in Persian cooking: saffron, cardamom, cloves, rose water and plenty of pomegranate. Although Iran once had a thriving wine industry, the production and consumption of alcohol has been banned in the country since the Islamic revolution in 1979, so bar manager Thandi Bukhala will source wines from the region, including Lebanon and Israel, as well as from Iranian-American winemakers in California and Oregon. All of which the Farivar brothers say they hope will allow them to create the culturally rich experience they want to share with diners. 

And as intimidating as preparing Persian food may be, savoring it is an experience that shouldn’t scare anyone away.

Vintage78 is located at 2100 P St NW. Dinner hours Sunday-Wednesday 5 p.m.-10 p.m., and Thursday-Saturday 5 p.m.-11 p.m. Lunch and brunch service will be added in mid-September.