Best Nottingham restaurants: The 'unique' Persian restaurant taking the Nottingham food scene by storm

Saffron, sumac, walnuts, and sour cherries; harissa rose crispy chicken, halloumi with sticky fig and balsamic glaze.

If these ingredients sound as unusual as they do mouth-watering, that’s because they’re part of a unique concept in Persian cuisine that can only be found in Nottingham.

Over the past decade the city’s foodie scene has been growing, and developing, and producing whole new ideas and twists on the old.

And while the big city-centre restaurants get most of the praise, there’s one independent place out in Sherwood that you might not have heard of but which, if you like your culinary adventures, you really must check out.

Owner Orash Naini has always adored Persian food - his Iranian father, who moved to the UK over 40 years ago, has been in the restaurant trade for most of his life.

But he saw an opportunity to take all those wonderful traditional dishes and shake them up a bit.

The result is a truly unique concept in modern cuisine: Persian tapas, and the restaurant, Pistachio.

“It’s unique,” says Orash. “With most traditional Persian restaurants you get very traditional food, consisting of the same ingredients throughout. It’s beautiful food but what we’ve tried to do is bring it to the present.

“We’ve gone back to basics, to use the ingredients we use in Persian cuisine and create a tapas menu that’s completely unique.

You won’t find these dishes in another Persian restaurant or in Iran.”

Pistachio opened its doors as a restaurant in 2021. But that was after a very tough time for owners Orash Naini and his wife, who had been on the verge of opening over a year before - just before Covid struck and the country went into lockdown.

It was the most inauspicious of starts for a business concept that had been years in the making.

Instead of the restaurateur’s dream they had in mind, they had to adapt and operate as a takeaway only.

Orash says: “We spent all this money, and we were in desperation really. But we survived through.

“We had to wait it out to see if we were going to open for a second lockdown. It was hard.

“But the Sherwood community was very open to us and very understanding. That projected into when we finally opened, we had that client base in the beginning.”

The tantalising menu at Pistachio, at 509 Mansfield Road in Sherwood, is made up of all original creations from Orash’s mind.

The idea was to take the traditional and beloved ingredients from Persian cooking, and play around with them to create whole new, never-before seen combinations of flavours.

Cue the birth of enticing dishes such as beef meatballs in sour cherry, pomegranate and walnut sauce, Shah prawns infused in sweet saffron, or the vegan crispy corn ribs marinated in sumac, saffron, lime and chilli.

“All our dishes I’ve designed myself,” says Orash. “I’ve tweaked a few dishes that I’ve learnt along the way. I want people to experience all these different flavours that they’ve never had before.

“It’s very nice to open people’s minds to new dishes.”

The site includes the main restaurant, Pistachio itself, and The Loft, a private hire space suitable for parties and catered events.

Orash has also brought in innovations such as a bottomless brunch on Fridays and Saturdays, and has taken pains to cater for diners with a multitude of dietary requirements.

He’s honest that it hasn’t always been easy, starting with the business-choking shock of lockdown, and in recent months, a strained period across the whole restaurant industry.

But Pistachio has firmly established itself as one of the most unique and exciting venues in the exciting Sherwood foodie scene, and Nottingham’s increasingly robust restaurant industry.