Trade

You may have noticed the term “smashed avocado” appearing more and more on menus, yet another phrase we’ve happily adopted from the US rather than just using plain old “mashed”. Smashed avocado is the key component of an excellent dish at Trade, an independent sandwich shop in Spitalfields, where it’s mixed with creamy feta, mint and chilli, and served on sourdough toast with slices of piquant cooked chorizo.

But the trend that’s most important here is the rise in quality daytime cafes - someone should come up with a snappy buzzword for that. At Trade almost everything is made in-house: cakes are baked freshly every day (on the day we visit there are blueberry and crumble muffins, chocolate and salted caramel brownies and classics like lemon drizzle and carrot cake) and they even smoke their own pastrami in the back yard. The menu has things like chicken soup with matzo ball, three cheese toasties with homemade chilli jam, and lobster rolls, although unfortunately the latter are only available from Thursday to Sunday. Instead we try the Trade chicken and bacon club, with grilled chicken, slices of bacon, tomato and caramelised onion in a ciabatta roll; it’s satisfying without feeling too heavy for a weekday lunch.

A former menswear shop, there’s a sizeable area for seating as well as a sunny terrace; this along with the delectable food makes Trade much more of a destination than a simple lunchtime café.