If the thought of one more Pret salad makes you lose the will to live, Vita Mojo is the place to spice up your health kick. The big idea at this bustling little Spitalfields branch (Vita Mojo’s second, following its debut in St Paul’s) is that customers design their own meals using swanky in-store iPads. On screen you pick from around 28 different ingredients, sliding bars up and down to adjust quantities. It sounds faddish but there is a point: as you fiddle with the tablet, the chart displayed automatically tracks the nutritional content and price of each ingredient, giving you full and almost frightening control over your calorie intake.
Sounds a bit too much like a café-sized eating disorder? Well, yes and no. The ingredients on offer are virtuous without being boring; highlights include rich, meaty slow-cooked beef, nicely crisped chicken thighs and minty quinoa and pomegranate salad. It’s good value too, with the average lunch clocking in at around £8. Granted, once I’d slid down all my bars to reach that classic diet bench mark of 500 cals, I was faced with a pretty teeny plateful, but if you are trying to slim down or have dietary requirements (everything here is gluten-free), Vita Mojo makes things nice and easy. Sure, you may be hankering after a Big Mac come dinner time – but hey, after all that carb-cutting, don’t you deserve one?