About our rating systemSaffron is a key ingredient in many Persian dishes. At Eyval, the spice stars in the restaurant's best cocktail, the Saffron Martini—a playful move in line with the eatery's name, which means right on! in Farsi.
Eyval offers a hipster's take on traditional Iranian street foods, so although the menu revolves around yogurt-based spreads, kebabs, and long-simmered stews, each has a twist. The mushroom kebab, for example, isn't just veggies on a skewer. It's composed of curvaceous king trumpet mushrooms, grilled to a perfect char atop the wood-fired oven and then offset by tiny pickled beech mushrooms and an earthy lentil stew. It's an exquisite dish.
Each of the classic strained yogurt dips known as borani feature a seasonal vegetable at the center—perhaps fiddlehead ferns or fava beans, with the bitterness of the veggies perfectly counterbalancing the creamy tang of the yogurt. The short rib stew also knocks it out of the park. It involves falling-off-the-bone tender meat in a surprising sauce incorporating pomegranates, pistachios, and North African barberries.
The space is casually cool, with lots of white subway tiles upon which scenes from Iranian films are projected (with the sound off). If you want to know what today's Brooklyn is all about, dine here.
