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Cafe Natasha is one of my favorite "filling stations," a place where you may fill up on hearty, healthy food without emptying your wallet. The restaurant, classy yet comfortable, also offers a temporary respite from the bustling foot traffic in the Loop, so you'll be refreshed when you rejoin the crowds.
Hamishe and Behshid Bahrami, natives of Iran, opened the restaurant in 1993. Before that, for 12 years, they operated The Little Kitchen downtown in the Paul Brown building, serving homemade American and Persian dishes in a cafeteria setting. At Cafe Natasha, their biggest claims to fame are osh (a Persian legume soup), assorted lamb dishes and five vegetarian meals. "Persian cuisine is delicious," said Hamishe Bahrami. "It's very healthy, with no fat, no grease and no preservatives. Nothing is deep-fried. Many of the dishes are kebabs, which my husband broils on an open grill. I do the rest of the cooking." And oh, what good cooking it is! In the course of two visits, almost everything sampled was delicious. If you can't decide among the appetizers, consider the sampler tray ($14.50), where you choose six of the eight available. These items also are available individually, and I'll list the prices here. Natasha's "colossal hot olives" ($2 for six) won me over immediately, jumbo marinated green olives with a modest amount of heat and a lot of flavor. The Persian ($2.50) consisted of feta cheese and fresh, pungent herbs to stuff into a piece of pita. Eggplant dip ($3.50) was a creamy combination of eggplant, chick peas, garlic, onion, spices and yogurt. Yogurt dip ($3.50) was just that, flavored with garlic and oil, perfect for sopping up with pita. Shirazi ($3) was excellent, a crisp relish of tomato, cucumber and red onion topped with a lemon dressing. Torshi ($2) brought spicy, pickled vegetables. About that osh ($2.50), the Persian legume soup -- what a perfect comfort food in a bowl! Osh is hearty and filling, an earthy vegetarian soup with legumes, herbs and whole grains. I tasted it on a summer's day and immediately began to look forward to enjoying it in winter. Cold yogurt soup ($3.50), brimming with raisins and nuts, was tart and refreshing. Feta cheese salad ($5.50), enough for three or maybe four, brought feta, chick peas, tomato, red onions and mild peppers tossed with iceberg lettuce. Italian yogurt dressing, served on the side, complemented the salad nicely. All entrees are served with your choice of soup, salad or the Persian appetizer. The best of the four entrees sampled was the lamb shank ($15), fork-tender lamb, falling off the bone, served with seasoned beans and lima bean rice. Ordinarily, I would consider this a winter dish, but it made for a perfect meal one warm summer evening. Chicken shish kebab ($11.50) also was juicy and tender, the flavor and aroma heightened by the judicious use of lemon juice. Herbed basmati rice -- lots of it--came alongside. Broiled salmon ($15.50), a generous serving, was topped with a sweet pomegranate sauce, an unexpected but tasty combination of flavors. The well-seasoned vegetarian stuffing used in the stuffed pepper and cabbage ($11.50 for both) cause d the two dishes to taste almost exactly alike, which wasn't a bad thing. The dish included pita and a fragrant yogurt-cucumber dip. Cafe Natasha serves wine and beer. By the bottle, wine ranges from $14 to $23. By the glass, wine costs from $4.50 to $4.75. One evening, we were too sated to order dessert. On another evening, we tried the blueberry pie ($2.50), which was bursting with blueberries in a slightly underdone crust, and Persian ice cream ($3), a creamy treat made by mixing vanilla ice cream with rose water and a bit of saffron -- a dessert suitable for a fairy princess. ===================
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