The brothers who own the beloved Iranian restaurant received an unexpectedly generous offer for the building, and plan to reopen in a new location in the coming months.
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The closure of Restaurant Tehran, the beloved long-running Iranian eatery in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, has nothing to do with the pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis has forced the shutdown of many local restaurants, but Tehran closed its doors on Sunday for very different reasons.
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The short version is that Mehdi and Mehrdad Sadegh, the brothers who own the restaurant at the corner of Gray Ave. and de Maisonneuve Blvd., got an offer they couldn’t refuse. A buyer offered them much more than they were expecting for the sale of the building, and they didn’t think they could pass up the opportunity.
The good news for fans of the restaurant, which wowed customers with traditional Iranian fare for 33 years, is that the brothers plan to take a break and then reopen in a new location in the coming months.
“It had nothing to do with financials or bankruptcy or anything like that,” said Mehdi Sadegh. “Business was going smoothly. We had multiple offers on the building throughout the years, and the last one, she was very persuasive. She offered ($800,000) above what we were actually thinking about. So we decided to sell the building.”
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The buyer is going to open a private foot clinic where surgery will be offered, Sadegh said.
The deal went through at the end of January. There is one floor above the restaurant, which they were using as a reception hall. Mehdi was the general manager of the restaurant and his brother was the chef.
They’re both looking forward to a little time off before jumping back in the business.
“We needed some time off,” said Mehdi. “As a restaurant owner, you can’t really take time off, because it’s constant work. Especially with the cuisine we have. You can’t give your kitchen to someone else and leave for a month or two. We have to stick to our recipes. It comes from our great-grandfather. And the offer was so good. Anyone would have taken it.”
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They took over the business from their father. The family had come to Montreal as refugees in 1986, during the Iran-Iraq War.
In a 1996 review, the late Montreal Gazette critic Helen Rochester said she decided to try Restaurant Tehran after receiving many recommendations from Atlas Taxi drivers, many of whom were Iranian immigrants.
Rochester said they told her: “It’s the closest thing you’ll find to real Iranian cooking in Montreal.”
Tehran has a faithful clientele that even stuck with the restaurant during the pandemic, when it often only offered takeout.
One of the biggest headaches in recent years was the difficulty of finding parking, which became even more of an issue after the arrival of the MUHC superhospital, and with the seemingly never-ending roadwork.
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“I don’t know what’s going on on that street (de Maisonneuve Blvd.), but they keep digging and filling, digging and filling,” said Mehdi Sadegh. “I’ve been there for 33 years. I can tell you, there’s no gold or even oil underneath that street. I don’t know what they’re searching for.”
Sadegh said his phone has exploded with calls and messages since Sunday, with some longtime customers in tears.
“People are devastated,” he said. “After 33 years, we’ve seen couples who were on their first date, we threw their wedding, and now the kids and grandkids come to that same restaurant. It’s like a tradition for them to go to Tehran.”
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