Quality Asian food for less with East Street's lunchtime offers

Working in the Soho/Fitzrovia area, with its humongous choice of lunch options, can be pretty bad for both my waistline and wallet. You can sample every cuisine imaginable within a square mile, yet for a price which is likely to have you retreating away from the till. 

Step in East Street, a restaurant on Rathbone Place which offers fresh pan-Asian cooking and regular great value offers. Despite it's modern, Westernised look, East Street serves an impressive mix of authentic Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Indonesian, Filipino, Korean and Singaporean cuisine, allowing you to broaden your horizons beyond the Chinese dishes you might be most familiar with.

Decked out with bright Asian street signs and featuring a large screen playing anime on loop, East Street is perfect for a fun quick lunch with friends. Mains come in at between £7 and £11, but the Eastern Express Menu (available daily between 12 and 6pm) contains great choices which won't disappoint. For just £8.95 you can help yourself to one of 4 dishes (or 2 more if you pay an extra £1) and get an accompaniment of either Tod Man Khao Pod, Miso Soup, Gyoza or Goi Cuon. I'd recommend the Pad Krapow, a Thai dish of chicken breast quick-fried with red chillies, fresh Asian basil and red pepper, served with steamed jasmine rice as its not just delicious, but pretty healthy too. Twin that with the Japanese Gyoza, griddled dumplings of minced pork, bamboo shoot and spring onion, and you've got yourself a filling, satisfying lunch for under a tenner.

One of the best things about East Street is that they are always putting on special offers in addition to those advertised on their website, so it is well worth signing up to their mailing list via the link here. Their current offer is a whopping 50% off the new Grab & Go menu which includes salads, baguettes and their hot dish of the week. I got an incredibly large and delicious grilled chicken salad for just £2.49 with this voucher, so it's definitely worth downloading for if you ever find yourself in the area stuck for a quick bite to eat. The offer is valid until 10th May so get your voucher here and start saving some cash. For the students among you, the restaurant also offers a 20% discount at any time on any dish, but not the Eastern Express Menu.

Splashing out? Head north up Rathbone until you get to Charlotte Place, a charming little passageway crammed with coffee shops and restaurants. Check out the cafe Lantana and enjoy some top of the range coffee and cake. Their website is here.