Isabella Nefar is the perfect ingredient in this real-life retelling of Iranian cookbook author Atoosa Sepehr’s flight from her homeland and the role food played in helping her start over.

Following a hit run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last month, the press night of the London transfer of Hannah Khalil’s My English Persian Kitchen was packed out – and for good reason. The small space upstairs at the Soho Theatre is already alive with the fragrant smells of onion, garlic and fresh herbs as the audience file in to take their seats, and what follows over the next hour is a sensory feast of food, culture and community.

The one woman show, written by Hannah Khalil and starring Isabella Nefar, tells the story of food writer Atoosa Sepehr, forced to flee her abusive husband and her home country of Iran. We learn of her initial struggles to build a new life in England and the connections she makes by recreating the scents and flavours of her homeland.

As Nefar lovingly prepares the traditional Iranian dish of ash-e-reshteh (Persian noodle soup with herbs and beans) live on stage, we piece together a fragmented history of her life. Warm and passionate monologues on the virtues of turmeric and the joys of a hot bowl of soup on a cold winter day are interspersed with jarring flashbacks that vividly capture theunexpected terrors of a violent marriage and the fear of a single woman at airport security lying about her plans to return.

Isabella Nefar’s performance is a joy to watch – she addresses the audience with an easy familiarity, as if we were guests invited round for dinner in her own home. It is this warmth which makes the breaks of consciousness into her violent past all the more haunting. It is at once a love letter to her homeland and an exorcism of the marriage that forced her to start again. 

In recounting, at times with humour, the overwhelming unfamiliarity of life in London, My English Persian Kitchen also speaks to the universal immigrant experience. Like many who live away from home, Khalil’s unnamed protagonist recreates the dishes of her childhood kitchen in an attempt to reconnect with what she left behind, and seek out a new community.

The enduring message of My English Persian Kitchen is one of hope. Hope for a fresh start and for the opportunities ofimmigration and multiculturalism. Inside the theatre, the audience is united over the opportunity to share a warm bowl of noodle soup and enjoy the community that Nefar, Khalil and Sepehr have come together to create.

My English Persian Kitchen is at The Soho Theatre until 5 October 2024. Find out more and book tickets here.

 Words by Ellen Hodgetts