Shahin Afsharian needed a change

In the last eight years, he had helped develop JW Marriott Plant Riverside’s fourteen dining outlets from the literal ground up and had served as the property’s executive sous chef and then executive chef. He had been with the Kessler Collection for nearly six years, initially coming to Savannah to wear the top toque at the Mansion on Forsyth Park. Prior to landing in the 912, he was sous chef at The Ritz-Carlton in Denver.

Kay Heritage needed a hand.

Since bringing wood-fired mobile-catered pizza to Savannah nearly seven years ago, her Big Bon Family franchise added its Bodega bagelry by day in 2019 and its pizza program by evening in 2021. All the while, BBF’s pizza oven on wheels remained one of the city’s culinary calling cards as the brick-and-mortar bagels and pizzas flew out the doors about as fast as her crew could bake them. 

Serendipitously, Afsharian and Heritage became fast friends five years ago and started sharing their respective restaurateur experiences, either in texts or over coffee once a month. At times, she was so deep in daily operations that she found herself texting him to borrow a big bag of flour or fifty pizza boxes. Earlier this year, Heritage asked Afsharian if he knew of anyone who wanted to pick up extra line shifts.

Sometimes, the answer is sitting right in front of you. Looking in the rearview mirror, both said that it never crossed their minds that what has happened would happen.

In June, Afsharian officially joined the Family as its managing partner, and the pair is poised to pen the next chapters in Big Bon’s culinary chronicle. 

FOOD FATE

Heritage acknowledged that she was not an “operator” and needed someone “like Shahin,” though she admitted with a laugh, “I never even considered asking him.” 

“There was a day when she was a little bit overwhelmed with all of the moving pieces and growth of Big Bon,” Afsharian shared. “It was a one-woman show. She was doing bagels, catering, pizza, everything.”

Heritage recalled The Moment clearly. At the end of March, Afsharian texted her that he did have someone in mind, an accomplished chef with plenty of management and service experience. Two days later, he came to the Bodega wearing his starched-white chef’s coat. The friends shared a pizza in the prep area, over which Afsharian reminisced about his entire culinary career.

What Heritage did not realize was that this was his interview.

“The more I thought about it and as time passed, it clicked with me,” Afsharian said. “This is the time for me to join a company that I believe in. This is time for me to stay in a place that I love, Savannah.”

Citing the systems and processes that turned McDonald’s from a mom-and-pop burger shop into a global empire, Heritage said, “Shahin has that same capability. He’s very entrepreneurial. He thinks beyond the scope of the work.”

“He wants to start and grow something,” she added. “That’s his passion.”

“She’s a teacher. She’s present. She’s intentional. She’s warm,” Afsharian said. “She created Big Bon to share with others, and she is doing that with me.”

A HOMECOMING IN HIS NEW HOME

At JW Marriott, Afsharian managed an average of 135 employees in the massive operation’s fourteen food outlets plus its banquet operation, totalling roughly $35 million in trade.

“I did not leave because I was unhappy,” he said simply and with a smile. 

“With a project of that size, you sacrifice your life because you have so many responsibilities,” added Afsharian, whose “family saw it” and supported the change.

“For the first time in my life,” he said. “I decided to stay in a place where I can settle, develop roots, and Savannah is the place that I call home.”

Under one much smaller umbrella with the BBF, he now happily oversees three outlets – bagels, pizza, catering – with a fourth under continued development, the Ghost Kitchen.

So much of Savannah reminds him of his native neighborhood in Mexico City, La Condesa. One of the oldest parts of the metropolis, the “very European” enclave’s streets and sidewalks are tree-canopied, its architecture a blend of restored art deco and brightly painted rowhouses, its blocks dotted with public plazas. Sounds familiar.

Afsharian said that when his mom came to visit him, she said, “This is like La Condesa.”

His new hometown “became a place of nostalgia” and “made complete sense for what we were looking for.”

“I was never a true Mexican. I was never a true Iranian,” Afsharian explained of his blended background. “I went to an international school, and then I was traveling all over the world, in like twelve different schools.”

“I’ve been a foreigner in my own country, so cooking is how I connect with my culture, how I connect to other people,” he said of an international lifescape that allows him to refer to a passport full of culinary life experiences, which is precisely where Big Bon is headed.

“The brand made sense for me,” Afsharian said of what Heritage has created. “It is an international brand with a global vision.”

A LITERAL SQUARE MEAL

Shortly after Afsharian came onboard, he hit ‘pause’ on Big Bon’s in-house pizza program. Though Heritage really introduced wood-fired pizza to Savannah – first on wheels and then in the Bodega – the ever-increasing demand for bagels and volume produced daily primarily necessitated swapping out the Marra Forni bread oven for a multi-deck.

“I think that Big Bon having the first wood-fired pizza oven on a trailer was a trendsetter,” Heritage said. “We loved that ideation and collaboration, and this is another tool with which we can collaborate with other local businesses.”

She and Afsharian decided that the timing was right for a wholesale change to the pizza itself, and in a few short weeks, the pies sliding in and out of those decks will look different, the centerpiece of this “brand-new image.”

Heritage gives full credit to Sally Roth, who heads up BBF’s logistics. “She’s really our third brain and is so great at execution, operations, systems, processes, all of that. Sally really pushed that through.”

Savannah Square Pizza is the new moniker, an intentional nod to the city’s verdant grid, and the name and the “globally inspired” pizzas are just as right-angled as Monterey, Madison, and Orleans.

Behind the cleverly designed logo, itself the Big Bon crown in quadruplicate forming a square, the boxes display the city map.

“We want to represent Savannah,” Afsharian said of the reimagined program. “Each pizza will be named after a square with ingredient linkage to what the square represents.”

The full pies will be 12” x 12”, more a “fluffy” Sicilianesque square. Two-inch high pans were custom-made, which will create what Heritage called a “cheese wall,” a signature crusty “crown of cheese” and another bow to the Big Bon logo.

Half pizzas will be offered as well as 6” x 6” slices, not unlike the erstwhile Grandma Slice.

Just as Afsharian showed me the bespoke pans, pizzaiolo Alex Viles brought out a ball of dough, a “dummy proof,” that Afsharian squeezed to test its structure. The two have been diligently developing and perfecting a 48-hour fermentation sourdough that will be the base of every Savannah Square Pizza.

“We want to be the first ones to bring a full menu representing that style of pizza, our brand, our flavors,” said Afsharian, “far from just the typical Margherita.”

“We want to take Savannah and put it on the map,” which literally means on the pizza boxes and in the names of the pies.

“We want to push the edges a little bit,” Heritage echoed. “We’re super-excited.”

LOX, STOCKS, AND EIGHT NEW BAGEL SANDWICHES

Big Bon’s basic bagel recipe has not changed but has been “improved” with “adaptations due to demand and volume.”

The Bodega’s origin of wood-firing 250 bagels a day in the Marra Forni is history. A busy Saturday can see the BBF crew crank out as many as 1200 bagels in the relatively new decks. Also gone with the wood-fired oven is any common bagel nomenclature. No more ‘Montréal’ or ‘New York-style’: it is a Savannah bagel, y’all.

“It’s our bagel. We’re Big Bon Bagels,” Afsharian said of the five-ingredient recipe that still uses top-quality ingredients, local honey, unbleached flours, and no preservatives. 

The au courant menu is a curated carte of “house favorites” that have been offered since Day One, notably the Savannah 912 and the Lox, plus eight new sandwiches, all of which evoke national and international food favorites. 

“This is basically a tour around the world,” Afsharian proudly touted, “using the bagel as a vehicle to give global flavors to Savannah.”

“It matched very well with what I do,” he continued. “I am a globally inspired chef. I grab flavors from all around the world and use the vehicle of the dough [to] transport diners. That is the main inspiration of the menu.”

“We even joke around [that] we’re the International House of Bagels,” Afsharian said with his signature smile. 

The Buffalo Bee uses Savannah Bee Company spicy honey to create a “fried chicken Southern twist” while the Mediterranean features hummus and baked falafel to impart Middle Eastern flavors familiar to Afsharian’s roots.

The Pesto Caprese waives il Tricolore, the cleverly spelled Bon Mi hails from Vietnam, and the Korean Mama is an homage to Heritage’s heritage. The pan-Frano Parisienne is served on an herbes de Provence bagel with whipped brie, prosciutto, and raspberry jam, and the Cubanito is a play on the eponymous classic but with prosciutto

The gluten-friendly Eggwhich uses egg patties in place of the bagels, and on the sweet side are the Cheesecake and Churro, pinning two more points on the menu map.

Like challenging the ‘traditions’ of pizza, Afsharian said, “I want to break the image that the bagel is only a breakfast item.”

“The dough is just a vehicle for us to come together.”

IHOB, indeed.

Another imminent change at the Bodega will be an intentional overlap during the hours of service when both bagels and pizza will be available, still working under the “until we sell out” system.

By the time you read this, you may well be tucking into a Savannah Square Pizza, a product that, per Afsharian, “represents the vision and the love of the place that we live in.”

In the meantime, he and Heritage are positively thrilled to be working side-by-side.

“He’s such a lovely person,” she said of her new partner. “He’s humble, friendly. He loves people, and he wants to make an impact for the community.”

Just like Heritage has.

Big Bon Bodega (2011 Bull Street) is open Tuesday through Saturday (7 a.m. to 7 p.m.) with the pizza program relaunching in November.

This article appears in Connect Savannah | October, 2023.