But his big break came in 1992 when a pair of New Yorkers visited the area. They suggested that the Middle Eastern goods might be popular in their city, with its sizable Persian population.

To further appeal to the New York contingent, Tahmili made everything kosher.

Every other week, Castellano, Tahmili and Tahmili's wife and cousin make triple batches of assorted pastries to take to New York. When the small store is stacked waist-high with boxes of Persian baklava and Napoleons, Tahmili loads them into his van, drives them to New York and drops them off at the eleven stores that he works with.

Compared to the thriving business in New York, the Watertown store seems quiet.

"Now if you ask me, I think I made a mistake opening here," Tahmili says.

But when he opened in April 1991, there were few other choices. The Iranian population in Watertown was fairly dense.

And more importantly to Tahmili, the rents were low. When he opened Tabrizi, his financial outlook was dim.

In the Beginning

Born in Tabrizi, Iran, Tahmili grew up in Tehran before coming to Boston in the late 1980s.

In Boston, he attended Massachusetts Bay Community College, heading for a degree in computer science.

Debts and bills soon added up, and the $200 Tahmili had brought from Iran, coupled with the $3000 he owed his cousin, proved to be too much. Tahmili dropped out of college.

"I had to work. There was no money coming from home," he says.

He found a job in his future field of food, as a busboy at McDonald's.

It was quite a change from his previous job in Iran, where he supervised 11 employees as the head of a food packaging business.

"I needed to survive in this country. Life is not cheap here," Tahmili explains.