This is the age-old story of boy meets girl, boy crosses half the world to start a restaurant in Taiwan. For an Iranian citizen who’d never tasted cow flesh, Davod Bagherzadeh was surprisingly adept at making beef noodles. He also introduced the sport known as “kurash” to Taiwan, which ultimately led to the Taiwanese team bagging two extra bronze medals during the 2018 Asian Games in Indonesia.

Located on Jilin Road in the Zhongshan District, Bagherzadeh’s diner is called Lao Wai Yi Pin Beef Noodles (老外一品牛肉麵; lit. Foreigner’s Top-Class Beef Noodles). Step inside and you won’t know the difference from any other food stall on the street. The menu on the wall is in classic Chinese calligraphy, painstakingly carved on a wooden plaque. The dishes are familiar to any Taiwanese: meat and tendons beef noodles, braised beef noodles, clear stewed beef noodles, and all sorts of local delicacies. Only after you’ve had a sip of the broth do you realize this restaurant is like no other.  

“I braise my beef and simmer my ingredients like everyone else,” Bagherzadeh explains in fluent Chinese, “it’s just the ingredients in my broth are a little different from other shops. I add onion, garlic, ginger, tomato, and some Persian spices, so my noodles are more fragrant and taste better.”

Beef noodles are Taiwan’s national delicacy, and every Taiwanese with a taste for beef has an opinion on what good beef noodles should taste like. Despite having been a foreigner who’d never even heard of beef noodles before, in the ten years since he’s opened his shop, Bagherzadeh has won over the Taiwanese palate.

In 2009, at the Taipei International Beef Noodle Festival (台北國際牛肉麵節), Bagherzadeh won third place in the braised beef noodles category, though he’d only set up shop for a year at that point.

“His broth is exquisite. There’s a touch of spicy fragrance, but it goes down smooth, and it is not greasy,” one customer says.

Taiwanese Beef Noodles with a Persian Soul

Bagherzadeh’s noodles are not only popular with the natives. Gourmets from around the world flock to his shop. Sometimes his reputation precedes him, and sometimes tourists hear about him from local cab drivers.

Visitors come from China, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia. Some of them make his restaurant their first stop when they arrive in Taiwan. After they’ve been all over the island and are ready to leave, they come back for one more tasty meal before catching their flights.

 
Photo source: Davod Bagherzadeh

Bagherzadeh works closely with the Taiwanese Tourism Bureau and has been to Hong Kong and Macau with officials to promote Taiwanese cuisine. He made quite a splash; hungry visitors formed long lines in front of his stall. He was so popular the organizer had to ask him to take a short break, so the other stalls could get some business.

“I felt bad when I saw business was slow at the other beef noodles stall. I told them I could sell some of their food at my stall. We were not in it for the money, nor were we paid anything extra. The Tourism Bureau reimbursed our costs if we sold a hundred meals a day. We were there simply to promote Taiwanese beef noodles. I liked going international,” says Bagherzadeh.

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Quality Over Quantity, Delivered with Dedication

How did an Iranian chef learn to make such appetizing Taiwanese beef noodles? Bagherzadeh has two secrets in his pocket: dedication and quality.

Unlike other restaurants that sell anything from pork rice to beef noodles in an attempt to appeal to a wider market, Bagherzadeh’s menu is all beef-related. Beef noodles, beef dumplings…even the dry noodles with minced pork were only included for the sake of the occasional customer who doesn’t eat cow. The dearth of variety belies his dedication to quality. Bagherzadeh is not above eating at other beef noodles shops to size up the competition. He states bluntly that many competitors don’t spend enough time simmering the broth, or they buy it straight from a supplier. Discriminating palates can always tell.

“It’s your choice whether you add more soy sauce than beef tallow, or vice versa. The ratio is important. Too much soy sauce and you don’t taste the beef, your broth is just salty water.” To demonstrate, Bagherzadeh holds up a spoonful of broth.

“This is why I don’t diversify. I focus on one thing only. Quality is much more important than quantity.”

Bagherzadeh, 44, grew up in the Iranian capital of Tehran. At the age of 18, after completing his military service, he left home to travel the world. His journey took him across Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

When he was 24, someone recommended that he visited Taiwan, and so he set off, though he did not speak a word of Chinese. His first impression of Taiwan was that it was different from other nations—because there weren’t a lot of foreigners. In Malaysia, he saw faces from all over the world when he got off the plane; but in Taiwan, there were far more locals than foreign visitors.

A Country Centered Around Quality of Life

“Let me put it this way: Malaysia is centered around tourism, whereas Taiwan is centered around quality of life.” The lack of international visitors in Taiwan turned out to be a selling point.

He met his wife through a friend; a year later, they were married, and Bagherzadeh settled down in Taiwan. He started a trade firm importing Persian rugs at first, but in a stroke of ill luck, a flood hit his warehouse and damaged the precious rugs stored inside.

A few years later, he shut down the business. Having been a chef’s assistant in Iran, Bagherzadeh tried his hand at being the proprietor of a Persian restaurant. But the high cost of importing ingredients and the difficulty in hiring help sank his business in a couple of years.

Never one to give up, Bagherzadeh opened his new beef noodles shop two months after he closed the old restaurant. He’d been in love with beef noodles ever since he set foot in Taiwan. Though he’d never made it himself before, he used his experience as a restaurant proprietor to launch his new career.

                       

“I crave a challenge. Operating a restaurant is like driving a car. Once you have a license, you can pretty much drive anything from a Nissan March to a Volkswagen, you only need to make minimal adjustments to account for some slight differences. At first, I had trouble stewing beef. I used up a couple cartons experimenting before I got the right level of softness and tenderness without turning the beef into mush. Also, I only use thin noodles. Thin noodles absorb the juices, while thick noodles will always taste like you are chewing flour.” Experience has turned Bagherzadeh from a novice into an expert.

Introducing “Kurash” to Taiwan

Besides being an expert in beef noodles, Bagherzadeh is also a certified “kurash” expert. Kurash is a wrestling style from Uzbekistan that’s akin to judo. In 2018, it made its debut during the Asian Games in Jakarta. The Taiwanese team won two bronze medals. Bagherzadeh was the man who introduced kurash to Taiwan.

Bagherzadeh was a national judo champion back in Iran. After coming to Taiwan, he participated in judo contests and won second place. He made friends in the wrestling world, and in 2005, someone introduced him to kurash. His interest piqued, Bagherzadeh took his judo students to study kurash in Uzbekistan, and eventually introduced the sport to Taiwan. His contribution led to Taiwan winning two additional bronze medals during the 2018 Asian Games.

Davod Bagherzadeh, beef noodles chef extraordinaire, “kurash” wrestling expert. (Photo source: Davod Bagherzadeh)

Currently, he holds the position of technical expert in the International Kurash Association. During the Asian Games in Indonesia, he was appointed to check the dress code of competing athletes.

“Every kurash wrestler had to come to me before they competed. All the Taiwanese wrestlers knew me, and I cheered them on. They had a chance to win the gold, but they made some mistakes in the closing moments.” Looking on from the sidelines, Bagherzadeh felt a pang of regret.

Volunteering His Time to Make Taiwan a Better Place

Bagherzadeh feels Taiwan has the potential to shine in the kurash event during the next Asian Games. There is a chance to break into the top five and challenge the reigning champions: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Iran, and Korea. He feels he has an obligation to help promote this sport in Taiwan. He is the deputy head of the Taipei branch of the Chinese Taipei Kurash Federation. He wants to lead Taiwanese athletes to compete in more international contests, and so he hopes the government can do more to support such programs.

“Athletes from Central Asia towered over our team. The Mongolians ate meat, but the Taiwanese team ate boxed lunches, so how could we hope to compete?” Bagherzadeh observes.

“To take the Asian Games as an example, if Taiwan would treat its athletes better, we would have better results,”

People sometimes ask Bagherzadeh: you sell beef noodles and promote kurash in Taiwan, but don’t you miss your home? Bagherzadeh smiles at this. He visits his home in Iran every few years, but Taiwan is his real home now. He loves the convenience of living here, though he dislikes how some Taiwanese still have the bad habit of littering. He’s spent half his life here, his wife and two sons are here, so it’s unlikely he will return to Iran to stay.

“I have a Taiwanese National Identification Card. I think I will live my life here.” Home is where the heart is, and Bagherzadeh has found his home in Taiwan.

Translated by Jack C.
Edited by Sharon Tseng 

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CommonWealth Magazine began its advocacy of corporate social responsibility in 1994, and in the coming years since, CSR has gradually grown in importance to companies, investors and society. In recognition of that trend, CommonWealth created the website "CSR@CommonWealth" in 2017 to highlight the most forward-looking CSR visions and ideas and create a CSR platform that can help build a better world.