PHOTOS BY ROBERT HALEBLIAN

Growing up in Virginia, Maria Oveysi remembers the ardent following for her mother’s saffron ice cream served at their restaurant, Café Rose, and later Amoo’s, which opened in 2007 and still serves the signature dessert.

Oveysi, who is Kurdish-Iranian, describes the ice cream as “a staple in any Iranian household. The density of the saffron, the floral notes, the pistachios … it makes for a beautiful concoction of uncommon combinations, at least to non-Iranians.”

Now the recipe has traveled cross-country to Kinrose Creamery, a Pasadena shop located in Mills Alley that has peach sorbet-tinted accent walls and a vintage Pac-Man machine. Oveysi owns the shop with her husband, Moe Kamal, who’s usually out front, smiling and waving people in.

“Our intention in creating Kinrose Creamery was to demystify the cultural approach to food that Maria and I grew up with. It’s complex and sophisticated food, but we make it accessible,” says Kamal, the son of retired professors from the University of Wisconsin, a state that often bills itself as America’s Dairyland. “Because of the dairy capital’s influence, ice cream was always celebrated in our household,” he adds.

“We hope that through Kinrose, familiarity with these delicious Iranian and Egyptian flavor profiles grows,” says Oveysi. “Even the consistency—both Iranian and Egyptian ice creams have a stretchy texture—is always fun seeing people experience that for the first time! The creaminess is our American soul in ice cream form, but we play around with much more to give our guests a dual experience between cultures.”

The entrepreneurial couple were drawn to California during the early days of COVID and launched their brick-and-mortar shop in mid-January. They are still a presence at the Sunday-morning foodie frenzy known as Smorgasburg Los Angeles, along with several successful pop-ups and celeb birthday bashes.

Kamal and Oveysi both have MBAs; plus Kamal has a master’s degree in bioengineering. But the shop “was an intentional risk, and strategic,” says Oveysi. “We felt that the timing was right.” Having grown up in the restaurant industry, she knows it would be naive to say the risk is slim.

Rose is my favorite of their ice creams made on-site using state-ofthe- art Italian gelateria machinery.

This and other flavors and ingredients on the menu are from the Mediterranean, Maghreb (the western portion of the Arab world), Levant (a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region) and other locales. Inspiration comes from their food adventures while traveling and exploring the connections between cultures. They also translate their best-loved desserts and Iranian and Egyptian cuisines’ timeless flavors into ice cream.

This is to say, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.

You won’t find vanilla or chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream at Kinrose. Instead, you’ll see flavors and toppings like konafa (an almost pasta-like shredded filo dough), orange-blossom and rose waters, sour cherries, almonds, walnuts, pistachios, crushed baklava, pomegranate and tamarind. Sheer berenj, or roz bel laban, is an airy re-imagining of rice pudding, and lavashak is a tart, thin fruit leather that can be rolled into an ice cream cone. And premium saffron, which Oveysi’s parents pick up when they visit Iran.

Salep, made from orchids, and mastic provide some flavors like Egyptian Mint Chip (an homage to Kamal’s father’s favorite) their signature bouncy, stretchy, marshmallowy texture. Pashmak, also called ghazal el banat, is a flirty, fluffy topping of spun sugar that translates to “fur coat” in Farsi and to “sweet-talking a fine lady” in Arabic.

After hours, the shop transforms into its “alter ego,” a space for SWANA (South-West Asian and North African) comedians, and any comedian who needs a space to showcase their talent. Attending stand-up comedy shows, especially the Hollywood Improv’s Hilarious Habibis, is a favorite activity, they say. “Naturally, when we opened our shop we wanted to host a comedy show,” says Oveysi.

“We hope that our intentions find the path to ‘our’ people, whoever they may be,” she adds. “I think the pandemic gave us both the equivalent of liquid courage, in our case the ice cream courage, to go headfirst and trust the timing of our lives.”

• Kinrose Creamery Pasadena
  140 Mills Place, Pasadena
  @KinroseCreamery