Avocado-enthusiasts rejoice: a restaurant dedicated to the green fruit is opening in London next month.
Aptly named, The Avocado Show’s menu features dishes that have been slightly tweaked from their traditional ingredients, such as a beef burger stacked between two avocado halves or Eggs Florentine served on a bed of avocado instead of an English muffin.
Other items include an “Avo Garden” which is avocado, hummus, spices, herbs and flowers served with pita sticks, and a “Sinner Stack” a pancake dish combining blueberries, spirulina, maple syrup and, you guessed it, avocado.
The restaurant has already acquired a central London home on 6 Princes Street in Mayfair, which sits between Regent Street and Oxford Street, but an opening date has not been announced yet.
The London restaurant was due to open last year but was delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Its current locations, based in Amsterdam, Madrid and Brussels, get through more than 1,000 avocados a day.
The Avocado Show’s owners, Ron Simpson and Julien Zaal, said they came up with the concept for the restaurant through their own love for the fruit.
While the restaurant’s popularity is ever-growing – it has more than 150,000 followers on Instagram – environmentalists have warned of the impact of avocado farming on the climate crisis.
As per the Netherland’s Ministry of Affairs, the United Kingdom imported 116,000 tonnes of avocados in 2019.
An increase in the international trade of avocados comes with a significant carbon footprint. According to the Sustainable Food Trust, a packet of two small avocados has a CO2 footprint of 846.36 grams (which is almost twice the amount of a kilo of bananas).
Additionally, most of the world’s avocados are sourced from Mexico.
“A Mexican avocado would have to travel 5555 miles to reach the UK. Given the distances, fruit is picked before it’s ripe and shipped in temperature-controlled storage, which is energy-intensive,” the trust said.
The Avocado Show sources its fruits from Chile, Mexico, Peru, Spain and South Africa. Mr Simpson told iNews that the restaurant demands “sustainable crops” from its suppliers.
“We believe in one simple thing – avocados are very healthy and good for you. There’s not a question of whether we should be eating them.
“We also demand sustainable crops. We have an open conversation with our supplier who shares our vision. They guarantee fairness and our avocados are certified as sustainable. We want people to be aware,” he said.
