Less Is More

Restaurateur Dara Mirjahangiry pulls in an A-list crowd at his New York City eatery Sei Less. Now he's eyeing his next phase

- JANEE BOLDEN

IF YOU'VE SPENT ANY TIME IN NEW YORK CITY, odds are you've heard Sei Less mentioned. Whether it was in a rap lyric, like Travis Scott's, "I'm out in New York, I'm in Sei Less!" or by following the unmistakable social media trail left by A-list-ers including Cardi B, Kevin Hart and J. Cole, it's clear that Sei Less isn't just a restaurant—it's a cultural movement.

And the man behind it, Dara Mirjahangiry, has a story as layered and flavorful as the dishes he serves.

Mirjahangiry, the son of Iranian immigrants, came to America as a toddler. Raised in Springfield, New Jersey, his industriousness developed at an early age. "I probably started working when I was 9 or 10," he recalls, recounting his first entrepreneurial venture shoveling snow and later expanding to summer yard clean-ups.

It was this spirit of self-starting that carried him through high school car-detailing jobs and into his first exposure to New York's dining scene as a teenager driving high-net-worth clients into Manhattan.

"I continued that car detailing business when I was in college, and I would go home for the summer and I had a list of clientele," Mirjahangiry said. "That evolved into some of the clients saying, 'Listen, I'm going to New York City with my family. Do you want to drive us?'

"I would do that on weekends, holidays and when I was home from school break. And that opened my eyes to the city."

After graduating from Syracuse University with a degree in finance, Mirjahangiry entered the mortgage banking world—but the 2008 housing crash derailed his path. A string of job pivots followed, from launching a Facebook-integrated real estate startup to working in student housing.