Smithfield market is a really interesting place, and if you can believe it smack dab in the middle of the market is a fantastic cocktail bar – Oriole[1]. Unfortunately they're closed now due to the coronavirus, but once they reopen I highly recommend a visit.

In the meantime if you're into cocktails the bar manager of Nightjar (same owners as Oriole) has some great videos online: https://www.diffordsguide.com/g/1151/tonys-cocktails

I am not affiliated with Oriole or Nightjar in any way, just a huge fan. (So much a fan that I've flown in to the UK on several occasions just to go to these places, can't praise them enough!)

[1]: https://www.oriolebar.com/

I've just google image searched for the Spitalfields Market, apparently people in here believe that plums and avocado grow just outside of London (because that's what I saw in those photos).

What I'm saying is that London cannot compete with countries/provinces where plums or what have you grow just a 15-min van drive away from said restaurants, and as such calling a city like London "the food capital of Europe" is a joke. Anyway, also calling Napoli the "food capital of Europe is a joke" because of its size and population density, I can assure you that a 2- or 3-hour drive to the South can get you to some random Calabria small town with way better food than you can get in most of Napoli.

But the food-mania is high with many people who think that just because a place happens to have money it also has good food.

Plums grow in England. I don't know where you got the idea that they aren't possible to be local produce or the idea that you cannot run a good restaurant more than 15 minutes drive from a plum tree. I think the food mania is in the room but it's not coming from me.

> I've just google image searched for the Spitalfields Market, apparently people in here believe that plums and avocado grow just outside of London (because that's what I saw in those photos).

London is only 35 miles away from the sea, how far do you think it is to a field.

As to your Van Drive: For example, Brixham (160 miles) is a popular place to get high quality seafood for the posher end of the restauraunts, this is ~3hr30. Getting fresh ingredients to london is a completely solved problem.

I was really confused by this comment because Spitalfields market as far as I know isn't really a food market, or at least isn't these days; but what they're probably referring to is New Spitalfields Market, i.e. not the one in the City. I wonder why they chose the same name as the old market, super confusing.

There are two Spitalfields Markets - one near Shoreditch and one near Hackney (the "New Spitalfields"). This is probably leading to some confusion