Walk into Böro Kabob, the Persian restaurant that opened two weeks ago in an Ellicott City shopping mall a few miles off Route 40, and you’ll be confronted with a massive pastry case filled with rows of Dubai chocolate cake, mousses, cheesecakes, palmiers, and various iterations of baklava. Next to the case is possibly the most beautiful samovar I’ve ever seen, a towering silver tea urn the size of a wedding cake.
You’ll also likely meet Ray Sinanian, Böro Kabob’s Iranian-born co-owner and manager, who, on a recent weekday, was not only helming the counter and helping diners navigate the computerized menu, but plating and delivering dishes of the food from his homeland.
Ellicott City is Böro Kabob’s second location; the first opened in 2022 in Columbia. This location was two years in the making, and the time spent shows. It’s a surprisingly welcoming spot, with lovely glassware, silver tea sets, and a semi-open kitchen.
It’s worth mentioning that Sinanian, whose family immigrated to Iran from Armenia before coming to Maryland decades ago, also co-owns Nora’s Kabobs, which has locations in Ellicott City and Columbia, too, but is Mediterranean rather than Persian.
So, yes, Sinanian knows his way around kabobs, the addictive grilled meat skewers that have a seriously long culinary history in Persia, now modern-day Iran. Böro Kabob, it should be said, offers a lot more than kabobs, though ordering some of those—whether lamb, chicken, beef, salmon, shrimp, or vegetable—is both necessary and very delicious.
In addition to whichever skewers suit your tastes, there are a variety of dips, including labneh, baba ghanoush, hummus, a smoked eggplant dish called mirza ghasemi, another eggplant dish called kashk bademjan, a yogurt-cucumber spread, and more, all arriving on a silver tray with warm triangles of pita bread.
As the samovar—which Sinanian brought back from a recent trip to Iran—and nearby silver tea trays demonstrate, presentation is important here, a bit of serious aesthetics uncommon in strip-mall dining. Not only do the dishes arrive on silver trays, but there is unusual attention paid to garnishing, in the form of dustings of black sesame seeds or crushed walnuts here, or a trail of pomegranate molasses or olive oil there. It’s the kind of attention to detail that not only beautifies a plate, but adds happy levels of flavor.
You know what’s also on the menu? Tahdig, that most magnificent of dishes: golden domes of crisped saffron-colored-and-scented rice. Böro Kabob also has lavash tahdig, which is that saffron rice carapaced with lavash—crisped bread that tops the rice like a summer-house roof. Accompanying that is a pretty bowl of ghormeh sabzi, a dense stew of herbs, greenery, dried black limes (a fantastic, traditional ingredient), and beef, fancied up by crimson barberries.
And then there are all those desserts, which are best experienced with cups of strong tea that Sinanian might present garnished with dried rose buds, also on a silver tray.
This is perhaps the time to mention that the restaurant’s name, Böro Kabob, references the Farsi word for “to go.” Sinanian says that it’s what his wife often tells him, apparently ushering him out the door, likely to his various restaurants. When it comes to the new Ellicott City spot, we echo the sentiment by simply saying: Go.