Eater Video
Chef-owner Chris Morgan makes hundreds of tahdig crispy rice, grilled kabobs, and plates of hummus every night at Joon
Chef and Joon owner Chris Morgan has been a mentee of legendary chef and cookbook author Najmieh Batmanglij since 2013 and created Joon’s Persian and Middle Eastern menu with her. Now he’s serving up whole fish, slow-cooked meats, and kabobs that play with traditional flavors and have garnered national acclaim for the upscale Northern Virginia restaurant.
Morgan walks his way through the kitchen as different stations prep dishes for service, including about 500 personal servings of crispy tahdig rice that are ready in the walk-in fridge at all times. The restaurant goes through hundreds of pounds of basmati rice each week, filling small containers with rices flavored with herbs, sour cherries, or saffron. Next, he checks in on his kabob cook, who has been building barg (beef tenderloin), kubideh (ground lamb), and chicken kebabs for over 20 years, and can build them uniformly by hand. Morgan breaks down a 75-pound Shenandoah lamb scoring the meat and prepping to cook it down for dizi (lamb neck stew). Vats of bright, lemony hummus are made for the lunch and dinner rush. A whole branzino is stuffed with pistachio and herbs — about 10 are sold each day — and they are roasted fresh for each order.
Before the rush of dinner service, Batmanglij joins the kitchen to try the lamb neck stew, talking about the background behind the dish and how it’s traditionally eaten. She explains that “joon” means “life” in Persian and is used to describe the joys in life, including trying a delicious dish.
Watch the latest episode of Mise en Place to see how Morgan and his team prepare kebabs, stews, flatbread, and complicated rice dishes to feed the 265 seats in the gold and blue-flecked dining room.
