Community, Authenticity and Virality w/ Logma's Farsin Rabiee and Ziad Halub

Today’s episode of the Vittles podcast is a joint interview with Farsin Rabiee and Ziad Halub, the duo behind Logma, the Iranian-Iraqi bistro cafe, which opened close to London Fields at the end of last year. Earlier in the spring, Rabiee and Halub began opening one evening a week, on Wednesdays, for a communal, supper club style dinner service, which is Logma’s genesis. However, its sandwiches — or in the words of Hester van Hensbergen, who reviewed the café last month, ‘gargantuan pitas filled with lamb kofte or aubergine’ — have since taken the ‘Goldsmiths Row Riviera’ by storm and immediately went viral on social media.

In the episode, we discuss creating something that people really want in a moment when so many hospitality businesses are feeling the pain; about the meaning and importance of community and authenticity; about navigating virality and hype online; and about how, despite all their early success, neither are trained chefs.

We hope you enjoy the episode.

Like our recent podcasts, this episode is free to listen to for all subscribers. You can listen to it here in Substack, on Apple Podcasts or through Spotify. If you’re so inclined, please like, share, rate and comment wherever you get your podcasts.

A massive thanks as usual to Lucy Dearlove, our producer and to the whole team at Young Space for hosting our recording sessions.

In an exciting development you can now also watch this podcast on YouTube. For that, huge thanks to our videographer Zaineb Abelque and editor Callum Winter.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.vittlesmagazine.com/subscribe