Satiate your palate
Catch Shekamoo Grill on Thursday nights at the downtown SLO Farmers’ Market and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and Friday through Monday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. at SLO Ranch Farms and Marketplace. Visit 811 Froom Ranch Way, suite 140, or shekamoogrill.com to learn more.
Blitzed onions squeezed until the juice is almost gone are key to the tender meat that Shekamoo Grill fires up on the patio behind SLO Ranch Farms & Marketplace.
Those onions form a base layer of flavor in the marinades for the hanger steak, chicken, and koobideh (ground beef and lamb) kabobs, pierced by stainless steel skewers that are an inch wide and more than 2 feet long. Barbecued over charcoal on a special grill that allows the heat and flames to lap at the meat, Shekamoo co-owner Sina Shakerian bastes the kabobs with butter as they sizzle.
All of it is key to the flavors he wants San Luis Obispo to taste.
“Char and juiciness, which is the whole reason I’m doing this,” he said.
The finished product is most often served on top of Persian basmati rice dappled with saffron and butter (if you haven’t tried that yet, you should), which comes with shallot yogurt, a Shirazi salad (cucumbers, tomatoes, and red onion with a lemony dressing), and a grilled vegetable or two.
Shakerian and his wife, Lindsey, have spread Persian cuisine around San Luis Obispo County since 2020, as a pop-up, event caterer, and with a booth on Thursday nights at the downtown SLO Farmers’ Market. In late January, Shekamoo Grill opened its first brick-and-mortar location at SLO Ranch alongside Sushi Table and soon-to-come Palo Mesa Pizza and Baby Bear Biscuits.
“After two years of catering, we started to see that we were going to plateau when it comes to being able to grow more,” Shakerian said. “We looked for over a year at different options. … Nowhere provided the opportunity for having an actual charcoal grill outside, and that was the essence.”
The SLO Ranch developer wanted an outdoor barbecue spot, met with the Shakerians, and they signed the lease in April 2023. After a year and a half, the marketplace is open, and Shakerian is grilling.
“You’re going to see my smoke off the 101,” he said.
Raised in Los Angeles and Orange County, Shakerian has cooked Persian food with his parents since he was a teen. His family and friends would gather together, and his father would barbecue classics like kabob-e koobideh and joojeh kabob (chicken kabob). People always told his father to open a restaurant.
“He always said, ‘You can’t sell your soul. I put my heart and soul into this food. That’s not something you can sell to another,'” Shakerian said. “I think that that’s the key, is I had the opportunity to do the thing that my dad thought that he couldn’t.
“I can still put my entire being into something and have people appreciate it.”
Shakerian started sharing his love for kabob with people while he was a basketball coach. He would throw the end-of-the-year party at his home and have the parents and players come over.
“I wanted to have fun with it so I would make kabob,” he said.
Then, the pandemic happened. One of the parents on the team owned a winery, and they needed to serve food to be able to stay open, thanks to state guidelines. So the parent asked Shakerian if he would make kabob for patrons so the winery could host a concert.
That’s what started the Shekamoo journey. He was still teaching in Atascadero at the time, and his wife was workingāand is still workingāas a project manager at PG&E. Together, they cooked, created, and catered.
Shekamoo was actually his nickname for Lindsey, and it roughly translates to someone who likes to eat, but in a playful way. The pair met while taking engineering classes at Cal Poly, and they would study together. After visiting home in LA, he would bring back home-cooked Persian food from his mother, which Lindsey loved and would ask about.
And while Shakerian tended to stick to his traditions when it came to cooking, Lindsey experimented. He said she would figure out what to do with the leftovers from catering, so they wouldn’t go to waste. Through that experimentation, she helped create what Shekamoo calls the “Persian version” of things like nachosāhouse-made pita chips topped with koobideh beef, red chile sauce, shallot yogurt, fresh tomatoes, and basilāand lamburgersāa lamb and beef patty topped with caramelized onions, tomato jam, shallot yogurt, and arugula on a brioche bun.
“The key is she helped create so much of this. The fusion foods, the crostinis. She was without a doubt a creator in this process,” he said. “She’s still working her 40 hours a day at Diablo, and she’s here every other minute. … She’s my light.”
While Shekamoo Grill is focused on kabob and fusion food, you can also catch Persian stews (khoresh) as specials of the day inspired by his mother’s cooking. On Feb. 3, his mother, Soudabeh Abdizadeh, was cooking ghourmeh sabzi. It’s a favorite in my familyāone my mother (who’s Persian), my sister, and I all love to make and eat.
A mix of herbs is pan-fried until the moisture is gone and the greens start to caramelize. It’s then stewed with dried limes, kidney beans or black-eyed peas, turmeric, sometimes saffron, and beef or lamb for hours and served over rice.
Abdizadeh came up from Orange County for about a month to help the Shakerians with their opening. At first, she said she was concerned about how hard the restaurant business would be on her son and daughter-in-law. But then she saw how much passion and joy they get out of it.
“He’s working very hard, and it’s because he loves it,” Abdizadeh said. “And his wife, too.” Ī
Editor Camillia Lanham is salivating over koobideh. Send some to clanham@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Feb 6-16, 2025.
Looks and sounds awesome – canāt wait to taste..