She moved back to New York, where she cooked under chef Marcus Samuelsson at Restaurant Aquavit and was sous-chef at the newly opened Pure Food and Wine.
[12] Interested in writing a cookbook on Persian cuisine, Shafia visited California in 2010 to spend time with Iranian relatives in Los Angeles and explore local restaurants and grocery stores.
[14] Shafia intended to visit Iran to research for The New Persian Kitchen, but her American nationality made securing an Iranian visa a difficult process.
In the autumn, when she returned to the United States, she began operating a weekly Persian street food pop-up in New York City's East Village.
[7] After the enactment of the Trump travel ban in 2017, she hosted a Nowruz (Persian New Year) dinner with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, a local nonprofit, to fundraise for the organization.
Shafia said that many of her Iranian relatives were either studying abroad in the United States or in the process of securing visas, green cards, or naturalized citizenship at the time of the travel ban.