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Hoss Zare was 22 when his father urged him to leave Iran. It was 1985 and the effects of the Islamic Revolution were still ravaging the country. Zare had survived the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War, and Dad knew there was no future for his bright son in Iran.

“Get out,” Zare recalls his father saying, with tears in his eyes. “Go make a life for yourself. I’d rather never see you and hear your voice on the phone and know you’re happy than bury you.'”

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the revolution, which sent between 2 and 4 million Iranians like Zare fleeing in waves, searching for a better life. The milestone makes this year’s Persian New Year, or No-Rouz, particularly poignant. No-Rouz is celebrated on the spring equinox, a time for renewal and new beginnings. And for Zare and three others in the culinary world — Arash Ghasemi, Aisan Hoss and Mehdi Parnia — that fresh start came through food.

Zare’s first job, when he landed in San Francisco, was in the kitchen of The Fly Trap, a storied restaurant frequented by San Francisco’s glitterati. By 1992, he was running the kitchen, and in 2008 he bought it, changing the name to Zare at The Fly Trap and introducing subtle and exciting Persian influences dish by dish.

“I had a story to tell,” said Zare, 56, looking back. “About Iran; about culture; about hospitality.”

It was also his way of soothing the ache for home shared by so many people of the Iranian Diaspora. For Zare and other culinary professionals, food is a way to share Persian culture without having to discuss sanctions and travel bans.

Zare led the way with his signature dishes, pomegranate and walnut stew deconstructed with French flair, and koofteh stuffed with rack of lamb. Americans loved the flavors, and Iranians felt an emotional connection — it was a taste from home, but fresh, modern and interpreted with high-end ingredients and plating panache.

The food world noticed, too. When New York’s James Beard House asked Zare to cook a Persian New Year feast in 2009, Zare said, “It was a highlight of my career. No-Rouz is peace and renewal. We celebrate Mother Nature and find hope and a new start after a harsh winter. It’s not religious. It’s human.”

This year, Zare will celebrate No-Rouz at Danville’s Mediterranean-inspired Albatross, consulting with executive chef Brian Bowen (Meadowood, Cavallo Point) on a four-course dinner March 19 and 20 that pays homage to traditional Persian new year dishes but offers new, elevated takes. Bowen is transforming noon-panir-sabzi, flat bread with feta and herbs, for example, into a whipped feta cannoli.

“For Persian cuisine to move forward, it needs to be done under a skilled chef who knows other techniques,” Zare said. “If the chef is only doing traditional Persian dishes, then you’re going to get stuck in this ‘my grandma’s is better than this.’ And the cuisine will never advance.”

If that isn’t moving Persian cuisine and culture forward, then Zare’s latest gig at Google might: Last month, he became an executive chef through Bon Appetit, designing recipes and menus that showcase Persian food for thousands of Google employees and visitors a day.

“I’ve always wanted to expand Persian cuisine, and every year I’ve had some goal to help bring it forward,” he said. “Now with Google, I’m hoping I can really do that.”

Walnut Creek chef Arash Ghasemi was just 14 when he fled Iran, leaving his family to travel over the Zagros Mountains with a group of refugees. He remembers men three times his age weeping during the journey.

“When you’re a kid, you don’t realize the severity of what’s happening,” he said. “It’s only now that I have kids and think of the tears in my mom’s eyes (when we said good-bye) that I realize it.”

Ghasemi wound up cooking in restaurants in the Netherlands before emigrating to the U.S. in 2004. He spent three years at Berkeley’s now-shuttered Ecolo, where he was influenced by chef — and Chez Panisse alum — Christopher Lee’s seasonal, from-scratch approach.

You can taste it in Ghasemi’s food at Main Street Kitchen, the Walnut Creek bistro and bar he owns with his wife, Lauren. It’s New American cuisine with subtle Persian touches: a Niman Ranch pork chop slathered in saffron-carrot jam, organic greens sprinkled with dates and pomegranate.

He learned the cuisine from an impeccable source: His mother, Afsaneh — his parents emigrated here in 2012 — works at her son’s side, preparing hundreds of kabob koobideh, hand-chopping mountains of herbs for ghormeh sabzi, the fragrant Persian herb stew, and helping Ghasemi host a series of Persian pop-up dinners to sold-out crowds. The next one will celebrate No-Rouz on March 21.

“I have the sweetest mom,” he said. “I’m finally learning her techniques. And I’m catching up on the childhood I never had.”

And Aisan Hoss and Mehdi Parnia arrived in 2013, drawn by dreams of dance. Hoss, a dancer, ran an underground studio in Iran, and came here pursuing a Mills College masters degree in choreography. She wants to establish a dance company, but she can’t do that in Iran, where dance is officially forbidden. People can bribe their way into government-approved performances, but she wants more.

“I’ve been interrogated in the past. If I want to dance professionally, I can’t do it there,” she said, cradling the couple’s newborn, Selma, in their Hercules home. Still, she loves and misses Iran and vows that if another relative liberal, like Mohammad Khatami, comes into power, she will go back.

For now, they’re trying to build a happy childhood for their baby, “somewhere with family, love and peace,” Parnia said. But their families are still in Iran, unable to visit due to the travel ban.

Their new beginning came through kuku, a frittata-like dish loaded with herbs and vegetables you may have spotted at farmers market stands and gourmet grocers across the Bay Area. Parnia worked for an artisanal food business while Hoss was at Mills, and the couple launched their Oyna Natural Foods company in 2016 with help from La Cocina, the San Francisco incubator kitchen.

Parnia thinks kuku is poised to go big. Cut into squares, stuffed into wraps and served at room temperature, it’s convenient to tote, healthy and delicious. He’s calling it “the next hummus,” a staple of Persian cuisine that could be even bigger in the U.S. — and, he hopes, raise awareness about Persian culture through food.

“Even in the Bay Area, there are people who say to us, ‘Oh Iran? The bombing country,'” Parnia said. “So what we say is, ‘Try this traditional dish. It is amazing and healthy and has nothing to do with (Iranian president) Rouhani or Trump. Have another meaning in your dictionary about us and we will consider ourselves blessed and lucky.'”