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Donia Bijan

Biography

Donia Bijan

Donia Bijan graduated from UC Berkeley and Le Cordon Bleu. After presiding over many of San Francisco’s acclaimed restaurants and earning awards for her French-inspired cuisine, in 1994 she opened her own restaurant, L’amie Donia, in Palo Alto. She now divides her days between raising her son, teaching and writing.

Donia Bijan

Books by Donia Bijan

The Last Days of Café Leila
by Donia Bijan - Fiction

When we first meet Noor, she is living in San Francisco, missing her beloved father, Zod, in Iran. Now, dragging her stubborn teenage daughter, Lily, with her, she returns to Tehran and to Café Leila, the restaurant her family has been running for three generations. Iran may have changed, but Café Leila, still run by Zod, has stayed blessedly the same; it is a refuge of laughter and solace for its makeshift family of staff and regulars. As Noor revisits her Persian childhood, she must rethink who she is --- a mother, a daughter, a woman estranged from her marriage and from her life in California. And together, she and Lily get swept up in the beauty and brutality of Tehran.

Maman's Homesick Pie: A Persian Heart in an American Kitchen
by Donia Bijan - Cooking, Food, Nonfiction

Told through the language of food, MAMAN’S HOMESICK PIE follows Donia Bijan’s journey from revolution-torn Tehran to becoming a successful chef in America.