Director: ShowBox
Cast: Mark Wiens
Street Food – Tabriz, Iran is a 2021 food travel documentary featuring Mark Wiens exploring the ancient culinary heart of Tabriz, one of Iran's oldest and most storied cities. The film takes viewers inside the legendary Bazaar of Tabriz, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, revealing the street food culture that has fed this city for centuries.
What is Street Food in Istanbul Mark Wiens about?
Mark Wiens arrives in Tabriz on a mission to uncover what locals have been eating for generations. The Bazaar of Tabriz — one of the oldest continuously operating markets in the Middle East — is his starting point, a vast covered world of spice merchants, food stalls, weavers, and artisans. He moves through its vaulted corridors tasting traditional Azerbaijani-Persian dishes: kebabs grilled over open flame, richly spiced stews, freshly baked bread pulled from stone ovens, and sweets prepared by families who have worked the same stall for generations. Along the way he documents the remarkable fact that this market has functioned in nearly the same way for hundreds of years — commerce and food culture intertwined in a living monument to Iranian heritage.
Cast & crew
Mark Wiens is a Bangkok-based food travel documentarian and YouTube creator known for journeys through markets and street kitchens across Asia, the Middle East, and beyond. In this episode his style is observational and enthusiastic, letting the vendors and their craft speak for themselves rather than scripting a conventional travelogue.
Context & significance
Tabriz sits in Iran's northwestern Azerbaijan province and carries a layered cultural identity — Azerbaijani Turkish by language and deeply Persian by history. For Iranian diaspora viewers, a documentary set in Tabriz carries particular resonance: the city's bazaar is not a tourist reconstruction but an everyday public space still used exactly as it has been for centuries. Food is memory here, and watching the familiar flavors of ash, dolme, and kebab prepared on-screen can surface a powerful sense of home for anyone who grew up eating these dishes or heard a grandparent describe the bazaar. The episode also showcases Persian carpet-making, for which Tabriz is globally renowned.
Where & how to watch
Available now on K-Time in its original English narration with the original audio track — no Persian dub or subtitles on this title. Stream on the web, on your TV, or on your phone with no VPN needed and no geo-blocking. Cancel your subscription anytime.