On April 30, 2022, a collective grief settled over the St. Louis dining community when the beloved Café Natasha served its last guests due to the retirement of its matriarch, Hamishe Bahrami. Now, those tears can be turned into joy: Hamishe is returning to 3200 South Grand and, along with her, the Persian specialties that endeared Café Natasha to generations of St. Louis diners.
According to Hamishe and her daughter, Natasha Bahrami, Hamishe will take over culinary operations for The Gin Room, replacing Salve Osteria, which opened after her retirement in 2022 and quietly closed on January 3. The food and beverage components will now operate as one entity, The Gin Room. Although Café Natsaha is not reopening, per se, the Bahramis describe The Gin Room’s new Persian food menu as consisting of “Café Natasha’s greatest hits.”
The Persian menu will launch when The Gin Room returns from its holiday break on January 15.
“For me, Café Natasha was the people’s house—a place for them to get comfort food,” Hamishe says. “Since I retired, I would get calls on my own phone from people telling me they haven’t found beef shish kebab like mine or falafel like mine. They’d go on and on. At the time, I didn’t think I would go back, but now I am happy because there are people waiting for me to open the door to mom’s house.”
The Menu
Since it first launched in 2014, The Gin Room has operated as a distinct beverage component to the restaurant side of 3200 S. Grand Boulevard (Café Natasha from 2014–2022 and Salve Osteria from 2022–2026). Now, the entire concept will be known as The Gin Room, a restaurant and bar centered on gin, cocktails, spirits education, and Persian food.
Fans of The Gin Room will notice no changes in terms of the beverage offerings and overall concept. It will continue to offer its world-class gin program, signature beverages, and informed, welcoming service. Now, it will do so with a food menu consisting of Hamishe’s exquisite Persian dishes.
“This is going back to our roots,” Natasha says. “I feel like I have been missing something. It was important to retire Mom, which is why we had to retire Café Natasha, but she came to us and said she wanted to do this. How can you say no to that?”
Although it will not be there in name, Café Natasha’s presence will be felt on The Gin Room’s new menu. In fact, all of the dishes will be ones that Hamishe has cooked over the years, both at Café Natasha and her first restaurant, The Little Kitchen.
Menu items will include Hamishe’s famous beef shish kabob with its mouthwatering marinade (a top-secret recipe as closely guarded as the Coca Cola formula), chicken kabobs, beef koubideh kabobs, yogurt dip, falafel, and rice. Natasha is also excited to bring back tahdig, a traditional Persian crispy rice dish, and Persian pickled vegetables known as torshi, which her late father, Behshid, used to make.
“This was something we stopped after my dad passed away in 2016, because we thought we’d lost the recipe,” Natasha says. “Dad and Mom would make it; it’s a lot of work, but it’s one of those things that makes me feel nostalgic. I asked if she could help us make the torshi again, and we found a video of my father making it, which allowed her to figure out the seasonings and ingredients by reverse engineering it from the video. I feel like my dad is up there getting a laugh that we are going back to where it all started—to a place of simple food with love.”
The Bahramis emphasize that The Gin Room’s Persian core menu will be smaller than Café Natasha’s, though it will contain fan favorites. Over time, as she gets back into the swing of things, Hamishe plans to add more dishes and run specials ranging from her famous Persian spaghetti to chicken koubideh.
The Chef
According to Natasha, Hamishe went into retirement with gusto, living her life to the fullest and enjoying her time doing all of the things she had always wanted to do: travel, visit with friends, paint, and explore other hobbies. Over time, however, she began to notice that her mom seemed restless; those feelings were confirmed, beginning last July, when Hamishe teased the idea of a return to the kitchen.
“First, in July, she offered to come work in the kitchen, but I told her no because she was retired,” Natasha says. “Then, she said it again in September and again in November. I realized she was serious, and when she began talking about going to work for a friend, I told her that if she really wanted to go back to work, she should do what she truly loves. She is a very proud human, and she wants to be a part of something. She just wants to give her love to people, be a part of the community, and let them come to have the food that gives them comfort.”
Although Hamishe emphatically advocated for her return, Natasha agreed on one condition: that she would find the support staff she needed so that she did not burn herself out. The idea, Natasha says, is for Hamishe to come in and work her magic in the kitchen, then go out and connect with guests as much as possible with the support of a reliable, well-trained kitchen staff, which they are currently building.
“This is so good for our hearts,” Natasha says. “She wants to put soul back into the food. This business has always been me and mom. We put our love, passion and soul into what we do. We don’t work for a paycheck; we work because we love it. When we see our guests from forever still coming in and there is joy in their hearts, that means something, especially in this current world. It felt like there was something missing not only in their lives but in ours.”
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The Backstory
Hamishe and Behshid Bahrami opened their debut restaurant, The Little Kitchen, in downtown’s Paul Brown office building in 1983. Although they began serving mostly American cuisine, they eventually added Persian dishes to the menu and developed a loyal following that led them to open a second restaurant, Café Natasha, in 1993. Originally located in the Delmar Loop, Café Natasha became a mainstay of the St. Louis dining community, known for its marinated kabobs and rice. The restaurant moved to 3200 S, Grand in 2001; in 2014, the Bahrami’s daughter, Natasha, returned to St. Louis after living in Washington D.C., with a profound love of gin and a mission to turn St. Louis into a gin destination. In that spirit, she opened The Gin Room, which has received numerous national and international accolades over the years and placed her in the pantheon of the spirits world’s top gin minds.
The Gin Room and Café Natasha ran concurrently until 2022, when Hamishe retired. Understanding that there can be no Café Natasha without Hamishe, Natasha and her husband, Michael Fricker, opened Salve Osteria in its stead. Known for its Mediterranean-inflected cuisine, Salve Osteria operated until this past January, when the Bahrami family decided it was time to return to their roots and give St. Louis diners a taste of what they have been missing for the past four years.
“This economy is hard, and people don’t want to go out to just get food,” Natasha says. “They want to go out for love and for experience. They want to go to places that have a feeling of family and tradition and love in the food. We may not be fanciest place on Earth, but that’s who we are—we put love into what we are doing.”
Hear more about this news on the Arch Eats podcast.
