The remaining dishes (mostly rustic stews simmered for hours, sometimes days) change daily. Hope for gheimeh bademjan: long, curling halves of Chinese eggplant trimmed with yellow lentils and hunks of Angus beef; fesenjan, in which evanescent rose water mediates between sour-sweet pomegranate molasses and the earthbound pull of walnuts ground fine; khoresh beh, which employs beef as merely a foil for quince; and ghormeh sabzi, a deep green fluid patchwork of parsley, cilantro and spinach, with a whiff of fermentation from black limes. (I did wish that Mr. Pourkay offered a combination platter, because the stews are best appreciated in conjunction.)

Each stew is presented on top of Persian basmati rice, which is a labor in itself. Mr. Pourkay washes the rice four times, pours it into a pot of boiling salted water, drains it, douses it with cold water, then puts it into the rice cooker with a little water and oil and leaves it to steam. What emerges is a cloud base of fluffy grains without a hint of cling, striped with gold from a sluicing of crushed saffron dissolved in hot water.

It is worth it to wait while Mr. Pourkay meticulously spoons out tasting samples and totes up bills on a calculator, with the front door swinging back and forth and people brushing past, occasionally knocking you on the shoulder. The food invokes the ancient splendors of the spice route, but it comes in ordinary plastic bins; forks and napkins must be foraged from the (very accommodating) pizza workers. In the back is a dining room with glaring fluorescents, should you care to eat in.

Mr. Pourkay must cook around the pizzeria’s kitchen schedule, which means only in early morning and late afternoon. (“I’ve been here since 1:30 a.m.,” he told me one day.) This hardly seems a sustainable state of affairs.