Ex-head Chef of Iran’s Presidential Office Speaks about Presidents’ Culinary Tastes

(Ex-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a Ramadan iftar banquet in an orphanage. Source: Armin Karami/FARS)

Last year, TV Plus, an Iranian celebrity gossip website, broadcast an interview with Gholam-Reza Shahinfard, ex-head chef in Iran’s presidential office. This video grabbed attention once this week after a number of political websites drew on its content to question Ahmadinejad’s claims of modesty.

Politics aside, Shahinfard’s remarks shed some light, however dim, on the rarely-disclosed daily life going on in Pasteur Street, downtown Tehran where the presidential office is located. With slim chances of publication of an Iranian version "The Residence", and lack of an Iranian Peter Souza to picture Iranian president’s daily life on Instagram, remarks by people like Gholam-Reza Shahinfard are valuable opportunities, especially when they address the hardly-attended issue of the culinary taste of Iran’s presidents.

The kitchen had modest days in the 1980s says Gholam-Reza Shahinfard, during the presidency of current Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Khamenei. Shahinfard remembers the president instructing him in person to prepare a single meal, even on occasions when the presidential office hosted senior figures such as members of Majles-e Khobregan, Assembly of Experts. The necessities of the war time –Iran was engaged in a costly war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for eight years- and Ayatollah Khamenei’s personal lifestyle brought about that modesty.

With Hashemi Rafsanjani it was different, Shahinfard remembers with a meaningful smile. Hashemi “was a lord”, Persian expression to describe someone with a lavish lifestyle, the ex-chef of the presidential office says, and ordered “luxurious food”. Kebab, Iran’s globally-recognized dish of skewered meat or chicken, is frequently mentioned by Shahinfard when he speaks of his cooking days during the presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Ahmadinejad, Iran’s former president, who campaigned on a platform of modesty and anti-corruption, had a liking for abgoosht, the trademark Iranian stew with basic ingredients of lamb, onions, chickpeas, potatoes according Shahinfard says. Ex-head chef adds that the dish was a regular meal of Sundays and Wednesdays during Ahmadinejad’s years in the presidential office in Pasteur Street. Despite luxurious abgoosht restaurants mushrooming across Tehran and other larger cities in the recent years, abgoosht was once considered the meal of the working class, a dish cheap but strong enough to provide energy to continue work from noon to the dawn. Kebab, however, was seen as the repast of the rich.

The video of Gholam-Reza Shahinfard’s interview can be watched here.