The Yearning That Drives a Cook

Andy Baraghani was sixteen when he walked into Chez Panisse in Berkeley and asked for a job. He had no culinary school plans, just a conviction that the restaurant Alice Waters built was where he needed to be. A chef there told him not to go to cooking school—keep working in kitchens instead. Two decades later, Baraghani has written a James Beard Award–winning cookbook, developed recipes for Bon Appétit and The New York Times, and built a career defined not by a single cuisine but by a restless search for flavor across borders. The thread running through it all is a kind of yearning—for tastes he grew up with, for places he cannot go, for the perfect mulberry granita he still cannot find outside Sicily.

The Persian Connection He Cannot Complete

Baraghani is a second-generation Iranian American. He speaks Farsi, cooks Persian food, and has made it part of his professional mission to "spread light on a culture that is not really viewed in the best light, especially in the States." But he has never been to Iran. He tried in 2019—went through the citizenship process, planned the trip—and then the timing was wrong. It still is. "I really did not think that I would be 36 and have not gone to Iran," he says. "It's a missing piece."