Courtesy Natasha Bahrami
Having survived and thrived for over four decades in the topsy-turvy restaurant business, no one deserves retirement more than Hamishe Bahrami.
Courtesy Natasha Bahrami
Cafe Natasha owners Hamishe and Natasha Bahrami
On April 30, Café Natasha (located at 3200 South Grand and originally named Cafe Natasha's), the Persian restaurant that she owns with her daughter, Natasha Bahrami, will close its doors and Hamishe will retire from the kitchen. “I love what I do in the kitchen, but COVID has exhausted me," Hamishe says. "I want to enjoy the last chapter of my life. I don’t want to stay in the kitchen until something forces me to leave.”
Natasha adds: “The heart and soul of Café Natasha is what my mom puts in her food. It has to be her food. It’s not Café Natasha without her. She cannot not be there. I’ve told her this over the years: ‘When she’s done, we’re done.’
"I thought, We can do something else here, but we’re not doing this without her and my dad," Natasha continues. “She’s worked doubly hard since Dad died—to keep his legacy alive—too. I know he’s excited up there for what we’re doing next and for Mom to be able to retire."
So in conjunction with the Persian New Year, the duo will host a five-week sendoff to celebrate all that Hamishe and her late husband, Behshid Bahrami, have contributed to the local dining community. After, Natasha is planning a different and as-yet-unnamed food concept for the space. Details will be disseminated in mid-April, before the closure of Café Natasha on April 30. In the meantime, the restaurant is open 3–8:30 p.m. on Thursday–Sunday. Reservations are highly recommended “up until the last few days, which will be more of a casual open house, with no reservations and buffet-style food,” Natasha says. “It’s not a long goodbye, more like short notice as far as I’m concerned. All the employees have been asked to return. They’re excited for us, too. We told them we’re all in this together.”
Courtesy Natasha Bahrami
Behshid and Hamishe Bahrami with daughter Natasha
The journey began in 1983 when Hamishe and her husband, Behshid, opened the Little Kitchen in the Paul Brown building downtown, serving American food. The couple opened Café Natasha in the Delmar Loop in 1993, when their daughter was 10 years old.
“They would get to the Little Kitchen at 3 a.m. to be ready to go for breakfast and lunch and then head to Natasha’s on Delmar to do dinner," Natasha recalls. “One of them would often stay there until 3 a.m. the next day, prepping. They didn’t sleep in order to make this all work.”
Café Natasha opened in its present location on South Grand Ave. in 2003.
“Looking back and remembering all that they went through, I just shake my head,” Natasha says. "Back when we started, Persian cuisine was pretty much unheard of in St. Louis, and my parents doled it out in baby-bird-sized portions to get people to try it.” Similar to the stories that Qui Tran and Eddie Arzola tell about the early days of their restaurants (Mai Lee and Chuy Arzola’s, respectively), when then–St. Louis Post-Dispatch dining critic Joe Pollack paid a visit and raved about the food, customers showed up in droves, embracing the culinary genres.
In 2013, when Café Natasha was a 30-year-old restaurant and her parents were to ready to retire, Natasha suggested reinventing the bar area, focusing on gin, a spirit on the cusp of a resurgence.
“I had to beg my parents to do it,” Natasha says, “especially since there was a considerable financial investment involved. I was living out of town at the time, learned all I could about gin in a year, and moved back to open The Gin Room.” She later became an ambassador for the spirit and was inducted into the Gin Hall of Fame in 2021.
Courtesy Natasha Bahrami
The Gin Room will remain—along with the gin-cocktail-focused patio bar—“and evolve to embrace the food," Natasha says. She hints that the menu won't be Middle Eastern but rather more farm-to-table and seasonally driven, which is why the team is shooting for a May launch. Staying the same will likely be the hours of operation. Sales at the restaurant have never been stronger, according to Natasha. “We’re doing better working Thursday through Sunday night than we ever did before, just by operating more efficiently," she says. "COVID taught all of us—especially industry people—to reevaluate our workplace and our lives, that there can be a work-life balance."
Hamishe says she’ll be taking time to travel and do more painting after the closure, but as the new restaurant concept emerges, her food will also reappear in various ways. Expect some reunion nights, anniversary meals, and legacy events. “My mom is returning to Iran for the first time since 1976 and will bring back recipes from her family, things that St. Louis has never seen," Natasha says.
Hamishe adds: “When we came here, I never knew I was going to be in the restaurant business. Had I known, I would have brought [the recipes] then. While I’m there, we’ll remake all the wonderful meals that I remember from years ago. I know there are certain herbs there that I can’t get here. I told my sister to start drying them now, so I can bring them back.”
And though she may not be in the kitchen full-time, Hamishe will very much be part of the new project. Similar to the role Mary Rose Del Pietro plays at Del Pietro’s, owned by her son Michael, Hamishe will play the role of boniface, or a welcoming mother.
“I love people too much,” Hamishe says. “It’s been two years. I want to talk to them and hang out with them and see their smiling faces…I want to greet them, hug them, and thank them.”
Natasha adds: “With Mom assuming some maître d’ duties, we’ll be able to offer more hospitality than we did before. People can trust that the next chapter will be just as full of love and passion as before.”
