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Azerbaijani cooking arrives on Lawrence Avenue East in Scarborough through QANI, a kitchen helmed by Mahmud Allahverdiyev, a Baku-trained chef and ambassador of the Azerbaijan Culinary Association. The kitchen's focus is the slow-cooked meat and rice dishes of the Southern Caucasus, a regional cuisine rarely represented in the city's restaurant map. Scarborough's growing Azerbaijani diaspora has lacked a dedicated sit-down kitchen anchored to the homeland's techniques and flavour profile; this operation fills that gap directly. The plov, rice cooked in rendered fat with meat, dried fruit spices, each component layered rather than mixed, is the kitchen's foundational dish the version here reflects Baku-standard preparation.