Inside Poplar’s hidden women-only garden and Bangladeshi food hub

Originally published in The Slice Tower Hamlets on 20 October 2025

Limborough Food Hub has allowed 18 Bangladeshi women to create and share recipes passed down through centuries, using garden-grown ingredients.

Tucked in a residential estate in Poplar, Limborough Food Hub warms the neighbourhood with turmeric and fried onion. It is a garden run by 18 Bangladeshi women volunteers. As a community cooking space, immigrants and asylum seekers can cook their home food here on a Monday, while members can do their weekly shop in the produce store.

During this year’s  Power of Food festival, guests were invited into this community plot. 

Fragrance and flavours gradually spread through the room from the kitchen. The women cooked while answering questions and chatting with guests.

Nazma, one of the volunteers, fried onions and turmeric at the end of the kitchen. After the mixture was golden, she added green pumpkin slices and let them simmer. Guests were intrigued by the ‘green pumpkin’. 

Nazma laughed: ‘It is very easy! I just bring something simple because I find it difficult to cook with electric hobs! I moved here in 2006. My grandchildren don’t like spicy food, so I always cook this for them.’

Tia, another volunteer, made dessert. She looked after three pots at the same time, including red sticky rice, fried coconut, and a brown soup. She shared a list of ingredients – jujube, flaxseed, cucumber, garlic – which did not sound dessert-y at all.

‘You trust me. It’s good!’ Tia asserted. She has been gardening and cooking for parties here ‘for a long time’, and said with a radiant smile: ‘When everyone enjoys and likes my food, I am happy!’

Two volunteers were cooking mixed vegetables with squash, Bangladesh beans, potatoes, peppers, and chilli next to her. 

Although most harvests have been collected in August, some black, purple, yellow, and curly red chillies were sparkling in the garden. A baby khudoo was growing. The whole of the Khudoo plant, including its leaves and flowers, can be eaten.

After a while, lunch was ready. The homemade Bangladeshi dishes steamed under the sunshine. They were accompanied by daal, fried Khudoo leaves with peas, and a pink milk with rose syrup and chia seed called falooda.

Before the guests ate, one Māori girl hesitated. ‘Our culture always lets guests eat first!’ The women laughed and filled their plates.

Despite her Māori background, the girl has found this community familiar. ‘I come from a collectivist culture, so I miss being surrounded by aunties and lots of food,’ she said.

Another guest, Jackie from Malaysia, agreed: ‘I think food is very helpful in getting people from different cultures together, especially when we have a very diverse community.’

The volunteers sang and demonstrated how to sieve the rice traditionally.

The idea to open up Limborough Food Hub came over coffee. One morning, Sajna, one of the group, chatted with the women about how their children were adopting a more Western diet. She worried their recipes may disappear down the generations. They agreed to share some Bangladeshi recipes that were passed down to them over centuries, and eventually create a Limborough garden cookbook.

Sajna runs the event, but many of the group members demonstrated their recipes. ‘It is to empower these women to run their own workshops. They all migrated from Bangladesh through marriages. They speak English, but they are not confident. This event will give them a confidence boost that they can actually do their own live cooking and present it to an audience if they want to.’

The female-only space is also important for Muslim women. Sajna shared that one of the group took her niqab off because there were no men. 

As a food researcher, Sajna believes that it is crucial to showcase the beauty of Bangladeshi and other food cultures: ‘We live in Tower Hamlets and it’s diverse. People need to understand cultures and ways of life. It doesn’t stop racism, but it gives us the opportunity to learn.’