If you’re a Hackney local, you may have seen a long, snaking queue curving around buildings, leading to a small corner site, its interior theatrically masked by a curtained entrance. Welcome to Logma, an Iranian-Iraqi bistro café on Goldsmiths Row in east London.
The bistro café was founded by the couple Ziad Halub and Farsin Rabiee, who wanted the space to be deeply connected to Middle Eastern culture and embrace the local community. ‘Logma’ is derived from the Persian, Arabic and Turkish word loghmeh, meaning ‘perfect bite’.
Inside Logma, the Iranian-Iraqi bistro café drawing crowds in Hackney
Ziad Halub and Farsin Rabiee
It all started in 2024, when Halub (born in London, with roots in Basra, Iraq) and his partner Rabiee (born in Colorado, with roots in Arak, Iran) began hosting supper clubs for friends and family drawn to their fresh dishes. This soon spiralled into takeovers at east London venues like E5 Bakehouse. In December last year, the couple stumbled upon a corner plot and decided it would be the place to set up shop permanently.
The offering centres on their kofte and aubergine sandwiches, alongside daily specials like fennel stew with saffron rice, served until they sell out. If you’re early, there are also tahini buns, which tend to disappear within the first hour of opening.
‘Our menu is in a state of constant motion, evolving as we explore regionality through the lens of seasonality,’ Rabiee and Halub tell Wallpaper*. ‘My recommendation is always to look towards the specials at lunchtime; they are the purest reflection of the current harvest and our exploration of it through an Iranian-Iraqi lens.’
On Wednesday evenings, the pair host Logma Lates, inviting 18 guests to gather around a communal, candlelit table or at the counter. It feels like stepping into someone’s home – expect to leave exceptionally full, buoyed by generous food and conversation.
‘Since we first met, we have been fascinated by the exciting overlaps and the glorious differences between the Iranian and Iraqi kitchen,’ the couple say. ‘These intersections are often regional; cultures naturally bleed into one another in areas where shared history extends far beyond modern borders, particularly in the Kurdish-speaking regions or the southern Gulf.
‘We explore this through a curation of techniques and ingredients that feel intuitively right together. In some instances, a dish will appear exactly as an Iraqi or Iranian would expect. In others, the combination results in something entirely new. And finally, some dishes simply sit beside one another like distant relatives meeting for the first time, each possessing its own distinct personality, yet making perfect sense in each other’s company.’
This symphony of flavour, culture and authenticity is proving a popular draw. At midday on the Wednesday of our visit, a queue of at least ten people has formed outside, while the inside is already packed with diners. As you step through the curtained entrance, the interior reveals a bustling, compact dining space, with a kitchen at the rear. At the front sits a large communal table, anchored by a floor-to-ceiling mirror, the menu scribbled on its surface in white marker pen.
On the right is a high seating area in a sleek butter yellow. It acts as a strategic divider, separating hungry guests from waiters busy taking orders and taking care of a steady flow of customers. A favourite detail is the delicate lace trimmings and ornate lighting, a quaint vintage note within an otherwise contemporary space.
The founders asked their close friends, design duo Bahbak Hashemi-Nezhad and Farrokh Aman, to help bring their vision to life. ‘We focused on designing the atmosphere more than the space,’ Hashemi-Nezhad and Aman explain. ‘Not trying to recreate the past, but the idea of the bistro as it would have evolved in the present, indifferent to trends, and always asking ourselves the question, “What is a contemporary Iranian-Iraqi café in Hackney like?”
‘We looked in multiple directions: the way Western cafés and bistros influenced the atmosphere of such spaces in the Middle East; conversely, how the grand cafés of Vienna and Budapest took inspiration from the East. Simultaneously, we looked further back to more traditional coffee houses, as well as domestic spaces from our region.’
The designers, in close collaboration with the founders, curated a world that translates their lived experiences and visual memories. This is expressed through considered details such the ornate lace, as well as chandeliers and furniture. The overarching aim is to create an atmosphere of comfort and memory. As Hashemi-Nezhad and Aman summarise, visitors should feel ‘momentarily enveloped by the space through all five senses equally, and leave with a desire to return’.
Logma is located at 81 Goldsmiths Row, London E2 8QR, United Kingdom