The food situation was rather strange. Lots of fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts (at left) are available, in excellent condition. And as befits a country that spent millenia straddling the route between East and West, spices are also readily available in good quality and large quantities.

And yet, the range of foods available in restaurants was very small. Every restaurant offers the following: lamb or chicken kebabs (usually two quality levels, and with or without rice); "schnitzel" (fried chicken or veal); salad; sometimes fried fish; sometimes a dish of eggplant with garlic. That's pretty much it. Maybe 1/6 of the restaurants deviate from this selection.

 As you can imagine, I got pretty tired of kebabs.

The guys in the photo to the right are making the inferior kind of kebabs, squishing ground meat from a big tub onto metal skewers with their fingers. The better kebabs are made with solid chunks of meat.

Eventually we went on a kind of quest for "fessenjun", a dish made with chicken seasoned with pomegranate essence that Mohammad had mentioned once in grad school and that I decided I wanted to try. We kept a sharp eye out for restaurants that might have it, but with only two days to go we had given up...and then it miraculously showed up on the menu of a restaurant in Esfahan. It was very good, in fact, but quite rich and strong-flavored.

By the way, food in Iran is very cheap. Before I went, I read a note from someone who said "I defy you to eat $5 with of food at an Iranian restaurant", and indeed, I was never able to manage it.