In a city that has gone dining crazy, measuring its blooming, energetic prosperity in restaurant openings, people sometimes overlook the pioneers.
Along Prospect Street in Georgetown, the Peacock Café and its founders, brothers Shahab and Maziar Farivar, are celebrating their 25th anniversary, an occasion and status increasingly rare in our little boomtown. The restaurant, with its engaging, welcoming-mat atmosphere and varied, high-quality menu, has become a Georgetown institution, not an easy thing to do in a village where quality and excellence are valued highly and judged closely.
This has everything to do with the brothers Farivar, two men who bring their unique individual talents to the task.
There is Shahab, the host, greeter, organizer, the face of the place, whose special gift is not only to make you feel welcome — what host doesn’t know how to do that — but to make you feel like a special visitor. He has a memory for faces and names, a quality that goes well with an authentic curiosity about people.
Maziar is the master chef, the man behind the food, but also owner of a casual congeniality, if you happen to catch him out from behind the kitchen.
Linking them like Super Glue is their shared background and the restaurant’s backstory. Iranian immigrants, they were followed to America by their parents. They joined forces in their common enterprise, starting a restaurant in Prospect Court, a small affair (a five-seater) that was initially a little touch-and-go, as such affairs can be. The brothers recalled putting their parents in window seats to make it seem that they had customers.
But from this small beginning came a move down the street and an expansion. The growth was based on the proven ingredients for success: people like going there, eating there and just being there. Service, quality food — which is not inaccessible to most wallets — and a persistent friendly presence have added up to the accumulation of 25 years.
The brothers amount to a classic American success story, the one still being dreamed by thousands of people, in spite of troubled international times in the post-9/11 world, an event they witnessed from the windows of their restaurant, the rising smoke coming from the Pentagon.
Five years ago, Maziar recalled their start. “Sometimes, we thought we’d last maybe two years,” he said. “Maybe not even that at times. But we made it. We did healthy food before there was a Whole Foods, we did gourmet coffee before there was a Starbucks here.”
The food is familiar — American, mostly — but always with a hint of other flavors, here and there. “I sneak things in, occasionally,” Maziar has said. And, if memory serves me, they also put out some of the best filet mignons in town on their 20th anniversary.
At The Georgetowner, we watched them begin with their five-seater, and occupied some of those seats.
Happy 25th anniversary to the Peacock Café and the Brothers Farivar.