Ali Saboor

The Path

At Sofreh in Brooklyn, New York City, Ali Saboor worked as the original chef until 2022, helping set the restaurant’s early tone through repetition, discipline, and the kind of consistency that gives a kitchen shape. That work placed him in a setting where flavor and rhythm mattered as much as the menu itself. Since 2022, Ali has moved into Eyval as chef and owner and chef and co-owner, carrying that experience into a role with more direct authorship. It reads less like a break than a continuation: One Brooklyn room giving way to another, with the same voice becoming clearer.

The Work Today

At Eyval in Brooklyn, Saboor serves as chef and co-owner, and at Eyval in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York City, he serves as chef and owner. The cooking sits in Persian cuisine and live fire, which he describes plainly: “The food here is live fire cooking, a little more contemporary, and a little more me.” That framing is useful because it defines the work without dressing it up. The food holds to inherited flavors, but it is not trying to stand still. Three dishes show that register clearly. Mast-o musir, a yogurt dip with pickled shallots and mustard oil, keeps the pantry close and the flavors direct, with coolness cut by sharpness. Kabob grilled over charcoal gives the kitchen its most elemental rhythm, using heat and smoke as part of the dish’s structure. Potato tahdig with tomato and sour plum sauce brings another side of the menu into view, where texture and contrast carry as much weight as flavor. Together, they describe a kitchen working with precision and restraint.

Signature

Ali's signature dishes include mast-o musir, kabob, and potato tahdig. Taken together, they show the same throughline: Persian cuisine shaped by live fire, with the Iranian pantry used as the base material rather than decoration.

In Their Words “It’s a combination of traditional flavors, but also using the Iranian pantry to come up with things that make sense.” “And I’m trying to give them a new way to look at their food and their own ingredients.”

Acclaim

The recognition around Saboor comes from the clarity of the work itself: original chef at Sofreh, then the lead role at Eyval in Brooklyn and Bushwick. The restaurant is legible through the dishes more than the language around it, especially mast-o musir, charcoal-grilled kabob, and potato tahdig with tomato and sour plum sauce. What gives the arc its force is how compact it is. One Brooklyn kitchen leads into another, and the throughline stays fixed on Persian cooking treated as living practice: specific, shareable, and open enough to meet guests without explanation.