Cafe Nadery

Got charged full price for wine which was pointed out to me for happy hour. Was not planning to pay $ 12 per glass at 6pm on a Wednesday when all the places in the neighborhood have happy hour. Very disappointed and annoyed. Never coming back or recommending this place to anyone. Wine bar near by is way better.

The décor and the atmosphere is pretty nice. I tried a fairly traditional dish to see how they do, and it came out quite good. However, I have to say that the service is poor. the bartenders (a guy and a girl) were quite uninterested to communicate and acknowledge the existence of the customer. Hey, if you don’t like your job or if you are not a social person then go get another job. You don’t stand at the bar and check your phone all the time, there is a customer sitting there and they expect service. Be nice to them, they are paying your paycheck.

Our server was superb. I have never seen a better service. The servings are not huge, but the quality was satisfying. We loved the ambiance and the music.

A beautiful place with very good persian food, nice atmosphere and very good service. Fasenjoon and persian Saffron ice cream were my favourite!

To make it short: Will never go again
We where not satisfied with anything at this place. The Price/​Service/​portion was too small /​the food didn’t test the way it should & No salt at all.
The waiters didn’t even care & didn’t wanna hear me talking.

The place is nicely decorated and clean. I consider the food to be good and the price is very reasonable. I would go there again but there must be some better ones in the city elsewhere.

Wonderful service and atmosphere! The portions are well-​sized as well. As an Iranian, I definitely recommend this place!
Try the gormeh-​sabzi entrée and definitely the kashkebadenjan appetizer, it’s a magical eggplant dip with flat bread!

Really a nice place– delicious food, good server.
However, the self-​proclaimed new manager appears to be PSYCHO. She answered no questions for us, and when we asked her in passing for coffee, she did everything she could to avoid helping the ONLY server in the place. She hurried back to her wine and food at the bar, or tried to go to a computer w a mimosa near it… Drunk at work, much? Maybe she was Fucking wasted bc she spoke LOUDLY and rudely to her staff, ruining our good vibes. Whoever hired her made a mistake… Hope she’s gone soon.

I stopped in here one night to grab a beer. They had a decent selection but better yet they had some live jazz playing in the corner.

Tried three of their small dished. Experienced a home made kind of taste which was very appealing. Very nice and cozy environment.

I don’t understand how this place got 4 stars — what an epic Unilocal fail :-(
First, the service. It was non-​existent. I came in for lunch, and the server barely acknowledged me – no smile or hello — except to toss a menu and a glass of water my way. I had to walk up to the bar to place my order; this is a sit-​down restaurant mind you.
Next, the wait. It was a Saturday afternoon at 1:30p, and the restaurant was not even 50% full — there were only 3 other small parties apart from me. I ordered the fried chicken rice, and it took 30 — yes, a full THIRTY minutes — for it to arrive. Jeez! I wonder what it’s like when the place IS full. I was tempted to walk out after the first 20 minutes. And during this long wait, the server didn’t come by to check in on me once or anything. He pretty much ignored me the entire time.
Finally, the food. I was baffled when I saw what they served me. On top of the rice plate, there were mushy, overripe, brown avocados that no self-​respecting restaurant should ever serve to their customers! I was so hungry at that point, so I just pushed the avocados aside and ate the surprisingly bland rice (it was covered in spices, but lacked a reasonable dose of salt). I’ll upload the photo of the rotten avocados.
This was one of the saddest restaurants I’ve been to in a long time, and the first time I gave someone less than a 15% tip… Stay away!

Great drinks here. They have a decent beer/​wine list and great Persian teas. The lattes were good too.
The food was so-​so. I have admittedly high standards for Persian food but even standard dishes like the Kashkeh Bademjoon (eggplant appetizer) were just not done well… I feel like they got these recipes online but don’t really know they should be prepared.
The people who work here are douchebags. The main host is a table nazi and wouldn’t let anyone sit at a table larger than their group size, even though the entire café was 75% empty for the 2.5 hours we were here. We were continually ordering food and drinks, and it wouldn’t fit on our table (we were at a table for 2). There was a huge empty table right next to us, and the waiters was hassling us about leaving one of our dishes on it, even though there were 2 other large tables empty and nobody was walking in.
I really don’t know how much longer these people will stay in business if they spend their time driving away the few customers who are actually in the café.

I won’t be going back. Everything was average, decoration, food, service. I was not satisfied with anything here.
I think i have bern to over 20 Iranian restaurants in the US, and this one was my least favorite.
Kotlet was tasteless, so i had to order yogurt to add some taste to it. And it was too hot, i have been suffering from a mouth burn for 3 days now. Usually servers would warn you if the food is too hot to eat.

I’d been wanting to check out Café Nadery ever since it opened in this spot a couple of years back. A big fan of Middle Eastern and Persian cooking, I was also intrigued by the artistic, expat vibe they seemed to be creating. While I’ve yet to enjoy a deeper cultural experience, I did get to try out the easier stuff – food and booze.
For my savory I got the Kotlet on a pita (similar to the Russian kotleta), which is essentially a beef/​potato patty with some tahini sauce. It was good but a bit pricey for a small-​ish portion. I’d like to try some other stuff, like the Iranian stews and Lubia Polow (again, comparisons to pilaf aka plov).
The staff was friendly. The only weird quirk was that the beer menu was off in a couple of places describing brew styles and the ABV. SO censured me for being persnickety, but I stand by my criticism. More importantly, they have several excellent beer varieties on tap, so do try them out!

Went there for dinner tonight and a nice Iranian restaurant for the neighborhood but prefer Ravagh. We started with the kashik which was the highlight of the meal. We also had the chicken fried rice and the koreshet which was just ok.

I want to say this is the Iranian version of Hiroko’s Place (
) — a sweet space skirting the line between restaurant and café, where you can sit and linger with tea, real food, and a book/​laptop (it looks like there are a ton of outlets. Free WiFi, of course).
There’s table service, but at least during the day, no one glares at you for sticking around long after you’ve finished eating. Likewise, food takes awhile to come out.
The interior is sunny and quiet. At night, they attempt a more bar-​like atmosphere, with happy hour specials for beer/​wine. Nadery is modeled as a gathering place and «haven for intellectual exchange» in that way characteristic of regions whose intellectual elites have experienced persecution following régime shifts.
…OK, that’s a really heavy way of saying that they sometimes host readings and art performances.
It’s not the cheapest lunch. My cup of tea cost $ 4.50 (what?) and a beet burger was $ 12.50. But the burger was yummy and cumin-​y, and $ 20 or so for real estate for an entire afternoon wasn’t bad.

Interesting! For someone who has dined at many different cultures food, I was surprised I haven’t tried Iranian/​persian food. The café smelled of spices, which is not a bad thing I thought it was quite pleasant.
We were seated quickly and menus came immediately. I decided to get the kotlet with pita that was accompanied by a side of salad. And also decided to try out the better than sex tea.
The food came pretty quickly which was great. Though the kotlet was luke warm. The sandwich was pretty subpar and a bit flavorless. Salad is always good, but the sauce accompanied was too sour. So I just ate the salad as it is.
The better than sex was not very good, also quite flavorless. I didn’t really taste any chocolate which was claimed in the description. It did have a side of honey sugar rocks if needed, but I suggest you actually use one or two to give the drink a bit more kick.
I did read up that the café is usually lively on weekends, which would have boosted the experience. Maybe next time.

I think I’ll put this back to a 5, mostly due to the former reviews.
I went back here for a very special night, the Goose Island Tap Takeover night.
Quite simply, it was a little party with a bunch of high class brews being poured and people being friendly.
Here is an image near the start of the night from them, before everything became dark/​spooky.
As a lot of the beers were quite strong (lowest APV% was around 8 but most were 12+,) I ordered 2 dishes along with it.
Kashk-​e-​Bademjan w/​walnuts, fried mint, sangak 7.5
Kashk refers to a Persian thing almost resembling sour cream
Bademjan is an eggplant stew, aka eggplant khoresh [hearty stew]).
Sangak is a flat bread, kinda like a nuttier pita
So it’s an eggplant stew with a sour cream like substance topped with walnuts/​fried mint served with pita.
Excellent rendition here of a personal favorite. The walnuts were delicious as well. I’d highly recommend this but it is quite rich. 4.7
Olives w/​Pomegranate Paste: 6.
While the sauce was fine, it wasn’t anything too exotic/​interesting. I’d recommend sharing this one instead. 4.
Date cookie: Fine, won’t fully review as well it’s just an inexpensive date cookie. If you want a heartier dessert, get their date/​pistachio smoothie (Majoon/​Mahjoon) outside of it’s price, it’s excellent.
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On another note, sorry for insulting your Fessenjen, I didn’t realize there were 2 versions, the sour version and the nuttier version (but the meat was still kinda bad there.)
FYI, this was my personal research, not a response from them.
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Food here is excellent, nice people also. and yea, the beer menu is excellent. i highly recommend this place, outside of the occasional bad service.
I’d recommend to eat at the bar for this reason.

So I have been here before and I really loved this spot. So much so that I bought my boyfriend and couple of friends on our day off. The ambiance is really cute, typically has live music on the weekends and really charming. This place was pretty empty when we came here around 2pm on a Tuesday (it was Veteran’s day and we had the day off).
We ordered drinks to start with. I ordered Marry me again which is a black tea with lavender, violets and purple cornflower petals — I liked my tea a lot, it was a good black tea but not too strong due to the flowers, and I added in honey in mine. My friend ordered a cortada which she really liked, while her fiancé ordered the faludeh and my boyfriend ordered the banana and date shake. The last time I came here I had the shake and they made mine with almond milk. This time around they didn’t have almond milk so I couldn’t get it. The shake is really good; its thick and it comes with medjool dates and nuts — it’s like a liquid banana nut muffin, but better way better! They serve it with a straw and spoon.
We also ordered the olives — which were plump, tart, juicy and very delicious! Here’s where I start having the problem with this place. There is only one person in the front of the house — who is serving the drinks, the food, and doing the checks. We order our entrees — fesenjoon (the regular and the vegan version) and ash-​te-​rashte with avocado. The server come 10 mins after we order that the vegan version of fesenjoon, which is made with tofu instead of chicken, is out of tofu but to not worry because it doesn’t impact the taste. We took her word for it and decided that we would still get it. The food once it came out was not really my favorite. The dishes which are actually stews were lukewarm and not hot. Our vegan fesenjoon minus the tofu was like having gravy with rice. The guys weren’t a big fan of their chicken fesenjoon either. I ended up asking for to sauce, because I didn’t want to waste the entire dish. The ash-​te-​reshteh everyone liked — it’s a bean, rice, noodle gumbo in a green herb-​y sauce. Although, we ordered it with avocado. Unfortunately, the service was so slow that the avocado came after our meal was almost done and it was completely un-​ripe. For dessert, we got the halva and he baklava which everyone liked.
Would I come here again? It is a cute café to hang out in but next time I would just come here for tea/​coffee/​shakes. The service was lackluster at best and the food was very mediocre. Also, if you are coming here for the live music, make sure to check on their website before coming here.

For starters, I’m half persian so I had certain expectations for how the food and the vibe’s gonna be like. As we entered the place, I knew at once that it was going to be a pleasant experience. The people who were dining there at that time were not the usual crowd. The atmosphere is so inviting (no wonder people frequent this place). The staff —so pleasant! I love it when they don’t rush you. They just kept on telling us «take your time. Finish your wine!»
I haven’t even mentioned the food yet. So I brought my filipino friend with me and it was her first time to try persian. She loved it. I loved it! Will definitely be coming back again and again and again to try everything on the menu!