Cafe Naderi: Tehran’s Historic Café

Updated November 2026 Cafe Naderi is still open on Jomhouri Street; we have refreshed the opening times, menu tips and directions.

Cafe Naderi is Tehran’s most famous historic café: a high-ceilinged, slightly faded coffee house on Jomhouri Street that has been serving coffee, pastries and European-style dishes since the late 1920s. For anyone curious about the city’s literary past, or simply in search of a quiet cup in the old downtown, it remains one of the most atmospheric places to sit for an hour.

The café was opened in 1927, during the reign of Reza Shah, by Khachik Madikians, an Armenian who also ran the Naderi Hotel next door. In a Tehran that was only beginning to modernise, it was among the first places where locals could try Turkish and French-style coffee, and it quickly became a meeting point for the capital’s intellectuals. Writers such as Sadegh Hedayat, Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Simin Daneshvar, and the poet Forough Farrokhzad, are all associated with its tables, and literary circles gathered here for decades.

That history is a big part of the appeal. Photographs of former regulars line the walls, the furniture is old-fashioned bentwood and dark timber, and velvet curtains look out over a small courtyard. Little seems to have changed in years, which is exactly why people come. A younger generation discovered it through the TV drama Shahrzad, in which the café is where the two lead characters meet.

The building has two separate rooms on either side of the entrance: the café itself and a restaurant. In the café, order a coffee with one of the classic cream pastries or a slice of cake; it is no speciality coffee shop, so come for the setting rather than the brew. The restaurant serves a short menu of old Tehran-style European dishes alongside Iranian staples. Its best-known plate is the Chateaubriand Naderi, a veal fillet served in a cast-iron dish, and there is also schnitzel, beef stroganoff, zereshk polo and joojeh kabab. Prices are moderate for central Tehran; for a sense of what a café meal costs today, see our Iran prices page.

Cafe Naderi and the neighbouring hotel are listed together as a national monument. In the mid-2010s there were reports that the site might be demolished for redevelopment, but the cultural heritage authorities ruled it out because of that protected status.

The café sits on Jomhouri Street, just east of the Hafez Street overpass and before the Istanbul crossroads. The nearest metro station is Ferdowsi on Line 4; from Ferdowsi Square it is roughly a 15-minute walk west, or a short taxi ride. The area is part of old downtown Tehran, so it pairs well with a walk to the National Jewels Museum on Ferdowsi Street, the bookshops of Enghelab Street or the old embassy quarter.

The café generally opens from late morning until the evening, and the restaurant serves mainly at lunchtime. Hours can vary, particularly on Fridays, public holidays and during Ramadan, so it is worth checking before you make a special trip. Weekday afternoons are the calmest time to visit; Thursday evenings get busy with students and couples. Service is unhurried and the staff are used to foreign visitors, but menus are mainly in Persian, so it helps to know what you want before you sit down.