Hoss Zare says goodbye to S.F.
On Sunday, Feb. 11, well-known chef Hoss Zare said goodbye to San Francisco, his home for the last three decades, and returned to his birthplace: Tehran.
It was a bittersweet move for everyone concerned. He brought a lot of passion to the dining scene, along with a sense of hospitality (he calls it “Hosspitality”) that every restaurant owner should emulate.
He started working at the Fly Trap in San Francisco in the late ’80s as a busboy, and he ended up buying the restaurant in 2008. In between he opened and closed four restaurants, including Aromi, Zare (next door to what’s now Wayfare Tavern), Bistro Zare on Polk Street and a branch of his restaurant in the Napa Valley.
At the Fly Trap he started serving more Persian dishes. He sold the restaurant, by then known as Zare at Fly Trap, two years ago to his business partner, Valen West.
But, he said, the call home was too strong. His parents were murdered in 2007, leaving behind six of his sisters. He suffered a heart attack in 2010, which affected him deeply and sent him on a path to introduce Persian food to the Bay Area.
Yet, he said, everything changed in 2015. That’s when he made his first trip back to Iran since leaving.
“I never thought I’d live there, but my family is there, and in the last three years I’ve gone back eight times,” he said.
He is one of nine children, and Iran is a patriarchal society, he explained. Now in his mid-50s, he realized he needed to go back to head up the family because he is the only single male. One brother is a doctor in Norway, another is in Turkey.
He returns to more than 30 nieces and nephews.
He said he will miss the Bay Area and will return frequently to do local consulting. But he leaves a city where staffing has been increasingly difficult, and goes to a country where the restaurant scene is exploding.
Zare said he thinks he can have a major impact in helping to shape the dining scene. He has a recurring role in a popular Iranian TV series called “Divar Be Divar” (“Wall to Wall”), a comedy show about seven families living in an apartment.
And he is going to be consulting for a restaurant called Boomi in Tehran, which under his guidance will change cuisine styles from Persian to Mediterranean.
Zare came to California when he was studying biochemistry at UC Davis, but he fell in love with cooking and learned his craft on the job.
“The biggest problem here is loneliness, and when I go to Iran they (the children) fight with their moms and dads to spend time with me, ” Zare said.
He was a bright light in the dining scene; I always hoped he would open a Persian restaurant here. But obviously the call home was too strong for him to resist. Michael Bauer is The San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic and editor at large. Email: mbauer@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michaelbauer1 Instagram: @michaelbauer1