Persia on a Plate utilizes institutional ethnography to examine an Iranian restaurant and grocery store in Maryland, U.S.A., named Sima Kabab House and Market. What can the interactions in these spaces reveal about the socio-political state of the Iranian diasporic community? Are the negotiations between staff and Iranian customers a type of cultural mediation, working together to intentionally construct a “perfect” Iranian identity? What are the symbols and processes that represent Iran, and are they helping or hindering the formation of a collective Persian or Iranian identity in exile? How are expressions of transnational citizenship expressed among the owners and Iranian customers? The two spaces opened up shortly after the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and the business is a multi-generational family enterprise. There are visible intergenerational differences characteristic of immigrant assimilation between the management of the restaurant by the original owners and their daughters. The multigenerational, family-style model is also apparent in owner-employee relations. Sima is analyzed as the site of structuration of a nostalgized Iranian/Persian cultural identity. During the course of the research, I discover that the grocery store is a site of sociality and pan-ethnic solidarity among various immigrant groups who patronize the store. Over time, using the data to make inferences about the structures and institutions that the actors and the spaces affected, I discover recurring themes. These themes include an imagined Iranian diasporic identity, “Reinvented Monarchy”, “Nostalgic Pastoralism”, aging of the diasporic population, emergence of the Post-911 diasporic Iranian generation, “Importing Iran”, and the use of food as a mediating factor for all of these themes. Future research questions to explore that can be answered through this type of ethnography include: How has the diasporic Iranian identity sublimated its desire to participate in transnational citizenship in light of the closed and adversarial politics between the Iranian autocracy and the U.S. government? How are the two historic periods of “liberal” autocracy (1997-2005), (2013-present) reflected in the civic and political activities of the Iranian diasporic community?