By Joe Lynch
Madison Magazine
Special To Channel 3000

Madison is host to a variety of mouthwatering Middle Eastern restaurants, but the majority of them are places comparable to what you can find in Milwaukee, Chicago or the Twin Cities.

Not Caspian Café, though, located at 610 University Avenue. It's the best place for Middle Eastern food in Madison and the most accommodating place for vegans in town. Caspian Café is the kind of place that would truly make Madison less delicious if it ever closed.

What makes Caspian so great? Maybe it's the fact that founder, owner and chef Mohila Nateghi has spent nearly every day at Caspian since it opened in late 1992, cooking only with fresh ingredients and welcoming customers in her warm manner. Maybe it's the variety of dishes: Caspian's daily specials offer everything from chicken simmered in pomegranate sauce, to eggplant stuffed with lentils, peas and rice to some of the best kabobs, falafel and hummus in town.

"I love to cook and to entertain," she says. "I cook like I cook for my family. That's all there is."

Though dozens of restaurants milk the "just like mom's home cooking" concept for all it is worth, Nateghi's sentiment is genuine -- it's just something she lives and believes. In fact, she's the sole cook at Caspian. When asked whether she would consider having another chef take over, she adamantly shakes her head. "No, no, there's no way. I am the cook," she says.

'I Started A Small Restaurant To Keep Me Busy'

Nateghi and her husband Mir moved to Madison in 1979 from northern Iran to escape the turmoil of the Iranian revolution. When speaking of what must have been a difficult transition for two people who knew very little English at the time, she remains casual.

"It was hard, but we survived," she says, laughing. She said she has no regrets toward their decision to leave. "I love living here. I like to have my own business, but (owning a business) at that time in Iran, that would be very hard."

The couple raised their family in the 1980s, and by the early 1990s, all of the kids were either in middle or high school.

"I started a small restaurant to keep me busy, and started catering, too. It just got busier and busier," says Nateghi. She and her husband (who has worked at Caspian for the last six years) arrive at Caspian at 6:30 a.m. and work until 9:30 p.m. The restaurant caters to the UW Hospital and Willy St. Co-op every day, too.

Vegan Delights

Caspian Café is all the more remarkable when I learned that neither Nateghi nor her husband have eaten half of the things on their menu for 12 years. They've both been vegetarians for almost the entire time Caspian has been in operation, citing personal health, the treatment of animals and encouragement from their daughters as the reasons for their vegetarianism.

How does a vegetarian chef know the meat she's cooking is good?

"I can’t taste my own food, but everyone says it's great. Sometimes I have a taste, a quick taste maybe, to make sure it's good when catering, but that's my job," she says, shrugging.

Most of the recipes at Caspian Café are family recipes passed down from generation to generation, with changes made based upon feedback she received from customers when the restaurant opened. The initial menu consisted mainly of meat options, because according to Nateghi, Iranians mostly eat meat. But after receiving requests for vegetarian options, she played around with traditional Iranian recipes to make them vegetarian and vegan friendly. She also expanded the menu to include things like falafel and hummus, which aren't native to Iran, but are items she realized people expected from a restaurant like hers.

When she says she learned how to make those items in Chicago, I asked if she took cooking classes there. She looks confused and smiles.

"No, I went to the restaurants, tried the food, and I could taste what was in it and knew how to make it," she says, as if this were something most people are capable of.

Changes And Cookbooks

Since moving to University Avenue after the first location was closed for the reconstruction of University Square, Caspian Café has extended its hours to 7 p.m. to include dinner, which is every bit as tantalizing as lunch.

Nateghi says that though she loves her job, she does think of retiring and going to Florida, "To be with my daughters and warm beaches."

If she does, she hopes to be able to train someone to take over Caspian Café and keep running it as it has for the last 15 years. And unlike various elitist chefs who guard their recipes like the Holy Grail, Nateghi hopes to publish a cookbook detailing all the recipes she has been serving at Caspian over the years.

Though Florida's bright sun and warm weather always seem tempting to those who spend more than half of the year in bleak winter, she seems perfectly happy with what she is doing right now, which is what she loves.

"I always love cooking and entertaining," she says.