Nasrin's Kitchen

Chef Nasrin can’t remember life before cooking. For her, cooking is an expression of love. In her family’s kitchen in Tehran, she faithfully absorbed secret recipes and delicate skills from her grandmother and mother.

By the time she was 15, Nasrin would make her own jams and pickles. Later on, she ran a little cafe in the city, serving traditional foods such as rich eggplant dips and saucy meatballs filled with hard-boiled egg and apricot, and also desserts with hot herbal teas.

In 2014, she had to leave Iran with her three little children, never to return again. They first emigrated to Turkey, where they stayed for two years; and in the fall of 2016, made their journey to New York and started over. After a rough arrival period, living in a shelter and looking for work, Nasrin was offered the opportunity to work at Eat Offbeat, a catering kitchen that employs refugees from all over the world to create a global cuisine for their clients. Though her English was sparse at first, she and her fellow cooks spoke the language of cooking. With each dish, they shared with one another the knowledge and stories of their disparate cultures and traditions.