NYTable

Caviar and hard work – the ingredients of a happy marriage

May 8th, 2019  |  Published in New York Sits Down to Dinner 2019, Uncategorized


Paramount Caviar tins at the company’s Queens headquarters. Photo: Emily Malcynsky.

Hunched over a silver lab bench in a white lab coat, dark pants and brown dress shoes, Hossein Aimani, 61, looks like a researcher in a lab. But instead of fussing with vials and beakers, he’s scooping neon orange trout eggs into gold tins, which he tosses one-by-one onto a scale before pressing on lids, slapping on labels, and plopping them into a vacuum sealer.

“Caviar should not taste fermented or vinegary or acidy,” he says, spooning dark green roe onto a minuscule spoon for a taste test. “It should be smooth. You should be able to pop it on the tip of your tongue.”

Hossein Aimani preps salmon roe for tinning. Photo: Emily Malcynsky.

Hossein spends the first hour of each day carefully packing orders, scooping roe from large shipping tins into smaller ones destined for restaurants, shops or private buyers. He checks and double checks that every order is filled correctly, sifting through each tin to inspect for egg damage. This attention to detail makes Paramount Caviar, which Hossein owns and operates with his wife, Amy, the distributor of choice for many of New York’s top restaurants, including Le Bernardin and Eleven Madison Park.

Paramount’s caviar is a luxury item, tasted off of mother of pearl spoons and washed down with top-shelf vodka or champagne. But lunch, for the couple, is often a sandwich in Hossein’s office and a few shared moments together in otherwise divergent daily schedules.

“Caviar a glamorous food, but we don’t always eat glamorously,” says Amy, biting into a large roast beef sandwich her assistant fetched from a nearby deli along with a cup of vegetable soup.

Today, Amy eats without Hossein, who piled his sandwich onto a paper plate before dashing off for a last-minute international client call.

Liaising with international farmers and clients at all hours is essential to Paramount’s business. Sitting down with her sandwich is a rare moment of rest for fifty-eight-year-old Amy, who was up at 2 a.m. to connect with Chinese associates about an upcoming trip to a Chinese caviar farm. Throughout the year, Hossein travels to European, Asian, and Middle Eastern farms that supply Paramount to inspect their processes – he can tell if a farm’s product will be high quality just by assessing the muddiness of the water. If the water looks too muddy, the roe could end up soft, runny or small.

No order leaves Paramount’s premises without Hossein’s final stamp of approval. “I taste the caviar for every tin,” he says. “The roe has to be firm, and the color has to be right.”

Hossein’s affinity for caviar grew from his childhood in small Iranian village close to the Caspian Sea, which was once bursting with sturgeon. In 1979, he moved to the U.S. to attend the University of Pittsburgh. But he hadn’t considered a career in caviar until his roommate connected him with a purveying company called Caviar Direct.

“I always knew good quality caviar because of my childhood,” Hossein says. “But the business I learned in New York.”

But when Hossein joined the industry in the 1980s, the future of caviar was uncertain. “After the breakup of [Soviet] Russia there was a lot of suitcase caviar,” Hossein remembers, noting the lack of regulation and the depletion of the Caspian Sea created a market for smugglers.

By the mid-80s, farmers began refining their techniques and quality improved. While still working for Caviar Direct, Hossein attended a gourmet food expo on an oppressively hot day in New York City.

“A lack of A/C brought us together,” Amy says, smiling. The Long Island native was attending the same expo on behalf of a candy company, and was in crisis when Hossein crossed her path.  “My chocolate was melting. Hossein heroically went up and down the aisles asking who needed dry ice.” Hossein then ran out to buy dry ice for all the vendors in need.

The couple married in 1988 and started Paramount in 1991. For the first year and a half, they ran the business out of their apartment in Regal Park, Queens. Eventually, they moved to their current building, nestled in a neighborhood packed with auto parts shops and garages. The location is ideal for importing and distributing multi-tons of caviar each year due to its proximity to Manhattan, New York’s ports, three airports and accessibility to New Jersey and Long Island.

A Newsday clipping on display in Paramount’s lobby shows the couple in the mid 1990s. Photo: Emily Malcynsky.

Paramount’s headquarters is hardly noticeable from the outside. The heavy metal front door is kept locked, and there are no windows. Once inside, it’s a different world, with plush silver rugs, royal blue chairs and a coffee table laden with luxury magazines, a vase of bright red flowers, and a bowl of gourmet candies. The left wall is paneled with wood sprung from old caviar shipping cases and hung with photographs of fishermen, sturgeon farms, and decadently-arranged caviar. At the very center, a stuffed, mounted sturgeon sits poised under the initials “PC.” On the opposite wall, Amy sits behind a receptionist window, which she slides open in greeting.

While Hossein handles the orders and assessment of product, Amy is devoted to client relations. “My job is based on the needs of the client when the client calls,” she says, arranging two wineglasses, a bottle of Prosecco, sesame breadsticks wrapped in prosciutto and a picnic basket for a potential client’s event.

As Amy finishes up her sandwich, she talks about their children, Ariana, 25, and Armaan, 17. The family lives in Closter, N.J. and outside of the office, Amy enforces rules to balance work and family. “The moment we get home, it’s family time,” she says firmly.

The couple is careful not to pressure their kids into joining the caviar business — Ariana works in computer science, but they suspect Armaan may have the caviar gene. Still, Hossein and Amy tell their children that success is fueled by loving what you do.

“If you don’t have the passion, you will not make it,” argues Hossein. “No one forced me to do what I do. We choose to do this.”

Tags: , , , , ,

Your Comments