“Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer
hello, my name is saghar setareh
I’m a food photographer, writer, cookbook author, teacher and cook. I hold cooking classes and food tours, among other culinary activities.
Lab Noon has been my home on the internet since 2014 (but these days I mostly share my writing on life and food in Italy, Iran and my recipes on Noon, my newsletter). I work with and around food; mostly photography, but also writing. I have a passion for beauty, and meticulous details that shows in my photography and writing. I am moved by human stories expressed through food, history or language. I live in a small, but charming apartment in Rome, where I can see a small part of the Colosseum from my tiny balcony.
I work as a freelance photographer (check out my portfolio) and food writer. I have written a cookbook called Pomegranates & Artichokes, published by Murdoch Books that you can purchase wherever books are sold. The book is published under the same name in the US by Interlinks publishing. Slow Food Editore has published the Italian Edition, Melograni & Carciofi. The German edition Granatapfel & Artischocke has been published by Ars Vivendi. I’m a member of the Guild of Food Writers.
I also teach cooking classes and photography workshops, and occasionally lead food tours in Rome.
If you have a project in mind to do together, feel free to contact me.
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Back in 2013 when I was looking for a proper name for my future blog where I would share my projects, I had two criteria in my mind: 1. It had to be easily pronounced not only in English, but also in Italian and Persian. (Few people know/remember that in the very beginning the blog was in those three languages! I soon learned to give up on that). 2. I wanted some part of the name to be collocated to a place: a studio, a workshop, a laboratory etc. Another part of the name had to do with food, of course.
That’s how I chose Lab, and that’s how I chose Noon, which other than meaning midday in English (easy enough also for Italians to say), is the conversational word for naan in Persian, meaning bread.
Our “bread” makes us who we are, in other words, and more repeatedly, we are what we eat. Our body is the primary home of all of us, everywhere. Our own skin is first place we need to feel good at. It marks us at the present. The sensation of feeling at home in one’s own body comes from the awareness and the consciousness about what we’re putting inside it. It’s not just about the lavish and the delicious. It’s not only about counting calories and munching only on celery and carrots either. It’s the attention and the care. The sensibility about the right amount of butter in the puff pastry and the relieving lightness of a healthy salad for lunch. And of course, it’s the responsibility of wanting to know how and where our food has been produced.
Food is also how we express culture, how we cross borders, without really intending to. For borders are rather new inventions comparing to the human presence on earth, and to recipes. Our common roots go far beyond borders. In food we can see our true connections, and uniqueness, no matter what our passports say. These flavors and encounters, are the heart of my stories; recipes and photos. Always searching for the connecting dots that make each of us a little bit less of a stranger. As an immigrant, I am constantly reminded that this is battle for me to be fought, more often than I’d like.
I am confident in saying that no other experience has marked my life the way immigration has. As a Middle Eastern immigrant, my being is never really from neither Iran, nor Italy. One of these lands lives in me & in the other I live; and yet they are both always with me. One has a dark and hard shell that shields the sophisticated beauty inside, the other showers you with its jaw-dropping beauty at the first sight. They’re the introvert and the extrovert, the East and the West. They both have big shares of ancient history and culture. Iran and Italy. One is my past and the other is my present and no matter what, they’re both my future. One flourishes when the other perishes, and they fuse into each other sequentially, just like the day turns into the night and the night dawns into the day. And in this mystic union the most sacred of places is conceived: home.
That’s why in Lab Noon I don’t talk only about Iran and Persian food, neither only about Italy and its food. I tell the story of one, and the other, and everything in between, and their flavors and encounters.
biography
Saghar Setareh was born in 1985 in Tehran, Iran. After graduating in Visual Communication in 2007, she came to Rome, Italy to continue her studies in Rome’s Fine Art Academy where she got a B.A and an M.A in editorial graphic design and photography. In 2014 she opened her food and photography blog, Lab Noon which received several international recognition.
In 2020 Corriere della Sera, Italy’s most important daily paper, which also listed Saghar among the “50 Women of Food”. Her work has also been published in magazines such as Condé Nast Traveller UK and National Geographic Traveller Food. Saghar is a member of the Guild of Food Writers and her first cookbook, Pomegranates & Artichokes was published by Murdoch Books in 2023. The book is published under the same title by Interlinks Publishing in the US. The Italian edition, Melograni e Carciofi has been published by Slow Food Editore, and Ars Vivendi has published the German edition, Granatapfel & Artischocke.
Saghar also works as a professional photographer for both commercial and editorial projects including several cookbooks. She teaches Food Visual Merchandising to Design undergraduates in the university of Perugia, as well as giving lecture on the gastronomic culture of the Middle East and the Mediterranean in several other universities. She also contributes stories and recipes to cookery websites and magazines.
For a full list of praise and contributions read Press.
