Sosis Bandari (سوسیس بندری)

The sosis bandari (literally ‘the sausage of the port’) refers to both the sausage itself and the dish that follows: sausages pan-fried in a spicy tomato-and-pepper sauce, served in a baguette (nan-e baguet) or with rice. It is the pairing of sausage and sauce that constitutes the preparation, not the sausage alone.

The term bandari refers to the port cities of the Strait of Hormuz, Bandar Abbas and Bandar Lengeh, whose cooking bears the mark of centuries of trade with India, the Arabian Gulf and East Africa.

The seasoning of turmeric, chilli, and cumin is atypical in Iranian cooking on the central plateau, which is more restrained in its use of chilli. It reflects the position of southern Iran on the spice routes of the Indian Ocean, where Indian and Swahili influences penetrated over several centuries of trade. Turmeric is present in higher proportions than in the charcuteries of the northern part of the country and constitutes a distinguishing trait of Persian Gulf coastal cooking compared with classical Persian cuisine.

Sheep’s tail fat (donbeh) constitutes the sausage’s principal fat. The choice is consistent with cooking in the Persian Gulf, where the fat tail of the broad-tailed sheep (Karakul, Balochi) is the primary source of lipids.

Iran possesses a more developed charcuterie tradition than is generally supposed, and a non-pork one since 1979, which makes it accessible to the whole population. The kalbas, an industrially produced boiled beef sausage (a kind of mortadella), is its other major figure alongside the sosis bandari.

The sosis bandari outgrew its regional limits as early as the 1980s to become a national street dish, present in all the large Iranian cities. The sandwich shops (sandwichforushi) that serve it rival the kebabs in the working-class districts of Tehran, Isfahan and Tabriz. Its popularity grew after the 1979 revolution, and sandwiches of sosis bandari became a cheap alternative to restaurants in a difficult economic context.

Its spread outside Iran remains largely confined to the Iranian communities of the diaspora, concentrated in Southern California, the Paris region, London and Toronto. In these communities, the bandari sauce is often prepared from local halal sausages, for want of imports. The preparation is one of the rare non-European charcuterie traditions to have given rise to a practice of substitution within the diaspora.