East London’s Old Spitalfields Market is popular with locals for its plethora of food stalls. You can find a wide range of cuisines all under one roof such as Italian, Japanese, Indian, Caribbean, and American. In the centre of the market, you can find “The Kitchens” that serve contemporary street food dishes. Dotted around, you will see snackier stalls and trucks selling smaller dishes, sandwiches, coffee, cakes and more.
You will probably walk in circles trying to decide what food stall to eat from. Worry not. A group of Rising East foodies decided to make it a little bit easier for you to choose what to eat.
Five of us met up to sample what we thought would be the best dishes so we could taste test for you.
- Humble Crumble
Humble Crumble offers homemade sweet crumbles – fruit pies in a cup basically – in a variety of flavours, and they take special pride giving you the freshest seasonal choices as locally grown as possible. Some consider crumbles a winter dessert, but with crumbles we always say “Winter is Coming” right now.
- Café Caribbean
Café Caribbean serves traditional, 100% freshly-made Jamaican dishes. You should definitely stop by and we recommend the chicken, stewed or barbecued to taste.
- Naan Wrap
Naan Wrap uses one of those clay ovens to give you just baked bread that gets you salivating just thinking about it – all cooked to order as you wait. The naan wraps your choice of filling, with salad and signature sauces. But there is something wrong with us – so we just had the cheese fries, which were very tasty. We did, however, get a freebie sample of naan bread – yum!
- Donovan’s Bakehouse
For great desserts, you should definitely hit up Donvovan’s Bakehouse. They have classic jam donuts, crispy pastries, and pastel de natas – a Portuguese delicacy. All great with one of their coffees.
- Bleecker
Bleecker was created because there were too few “real American burgers” in London. It now has several locations and everything you expect to go with a great American burger. If you want to eat a real “New York” burger, you should check out Bleecker.
- Fen Noodles
Fen Noodles is all about handmade noodles.The noodles are thick and flat, and stretched by hand right in front of you. If you’re in the know, Fen Noodles are brought to you by the same people that gave us Dumpling Shakes.
- Yum Bun
Yum Bun serves handmade steamed buns filled with fresh flavours inspired by Japanese cuisine and numerous trips to Asia’s food hotspots. It only uses local, sustainable, and high-welfare ingredients.
- Nosteagia
Nosteagia brings a bonanza of bubble tea flavours from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Bubble tea is sweet, cold and the bubbles are semolina/tapioca. It promises to fill your heart and deliver warmth.
Done eating?
When you’re done eating and want to take a digestive walk, you could check out the many different stalls.
From fashion to jewellery, to books, to home decorations, Spitalfields has it all. Old Spitalfields Market is a 4-minute walk from Liverpool Street Station.
The opening times are:
- Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri: 10am – 8pm
- Thur: 8am – 6pm
- Sat: 10am – 5pm
- Sun: 10am – 5pm
