words and photos by Shabnam Ferdowsi
I rushed past Momzi’s unassuming shop in the 2ème arrondissement in Paris, almost missing it completely, just as swiftly as I could have missed stumbling onto their Instagram account. How I found them I’ll never be able to remember, but their striking photos of their donuts that bordered on high fashion caught my eye. This was clearly not a regular donut shop you’d find in an American strip mall, and the store’s façade made sure of that. This was Paris, and these donuts were elevated. My curiosity peeked even further once I found out the head pastry chef and co-owner, Raamin Samiyi, is an Iranian-American who was raised in California. Naturally, I had so many questions.
As I walked into the shop, it took me a moment for my eyes to adjust to the change in lighting. Black wooden walls lined with mirrors, lit dimly, just enough to draw your eyes to what was important. 6 single donuts lined the mirrors, each with its own spotlight and description card. There was no fluorescent lighting, no bright display cases showcasing ample amounts of pastries, no peek inside the kitchen where donuts were made.
Sleek, dramatic, captivating. This was a show, an exhibition, and the donuts were the stars.
Raamin Samiyi was raised between the east and west coasts of the U.S. in an Iranian household. His mother, whom he calls “momzi”, and his grandmother were always in the kitchen cooking traditional dishes. Persian flavors have remained on his palate ever since, and have continued to be sources of inspiration for his culinary creations even today. At Momzi he’s incorporated pistachios, turmeric, and rosewater into his decadent donut recipes so far, and he sees barberries, figs, and black cumin making appearances on the horizon.
But the journey leading him to open a luxury donut concept in the heart of Paris was far from obvious. It was technically a fruit of the pandemic, but it wasn’t nearly that straightforward. His abilities to pivot and think creatively on his feet have gotten him through all the twists and turns over the years.
Around fourteen years old he felt a sudden infatuation with French culture and began teaching himself the language. Around the same time in high school, he started working as a cashier at a local grocery store making his way up to the bakery as the cake decorator. But coming from an Iranian family put him on the path toward the sciences in university. To meet his family’s asks halfway, he moved to France for his master’s in Pharmacology and landed a job soon after in Paris.
But eventually, burnout hit, and he realized he needed to shake things up. He couldn’t sit behind a screen all day—he wanted to work with his hands. So he moved to New York to decompress, and several odd jobs finally led him back into a bakery.
Raamin always had a more modern perspective on pastry, but he knew he had to learn the basics first. He flew back to France again for pastry school, where he learned traditional French techniques and practices that built the canvas he could play on.
A year in Avignon working under award-winning pastry chef Yazid Ichemrahen furthered his expertise, and once back in Paris he landed him a job with the renown group Maison Rostang . Exciting as it was to put his creativity to the test as the head pastry chef, the gruesome working hours and more traditional approach to kitchen operations eventually made him rethink working in restaurants at all.
So once again, he pivoted.
After some time off traveling and freelancing as a consultant, he was offered a job as the sous-chef at Hotel Lutetia, a prestigious palace in the center of Paris. A palace, as I learned, is a luxury hotel one notch above 5 stars, and in France, they have built a reputation for hosting world-renown pastry programs. Here, Raamin’s creativity and technique continued to flourish with the dynamic nature of the hotel’s needs.
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When Covid hit, he was let go. For eight months he spent his time working on personal projects, like his Quarantine Cookbook, while living in the South with friends. Re-energized and re-inspired, he came back to Paris to accept an offer as the head pastry chef at Pilgrim, a Michelin one-star restaurant. Even though he had written off working in restaurants, this felt different. Here, the kitchen felt looser, more modern, and less constricting. He felt comfortable in his shoes and loved his team. They gave him “carte blanche”, full creative freedom to experiment as he wished, and when Covid hit a second round, the experiments did not falter.
This is where the donuts finally come in. As Raamin and Pilgrim were brainstorming simple menu items that could fit a takeaway model, they brought up the idea of donuts. Raamin took the concept and sprinted with it. These were not going to be average, run-of-the-mill donuts but would push the boundaries of what had ever been before. The concept proved to thrive, so Raamin continued to run with it. He brought on his friend Thomas Bellego, who had an eye for art direction that could lift the project to the heights he was envisioning.
Together they honed the idea to achieve what is now a culmination of Raamin’s creative, culinary, and cultural journeys. The process would be molecular, the recipes driven by the highest quality ingredients, and every piece would be made by hand. Every single donut would be unique, and everything used to create the recipes and build the shops would be organic. Sprinkle in a Persian touch, memories of his mother and grandmother in the kitchen, to fully round out the concept.
A year and a half later, Momzi was born and continues to thrive.
