"You Choose" — POSH @ 1000 Trades

Venue: POSH at 1000 Trades, 16 Frederick Street, B1 3HE; website
Choice: Shepherd's Pie Sandwich (£8) Chooser: Chef

What do you get if you cross the common sandwich with a pub lunch? Knowing that people want more than the former but rarely have time for the latter, 1000 Trades have decided to find out, with their regularly changing selection of hot sandwiches under the banner POSH — because this is not your regular Pret rendition of a midday feeding. Take a pub classic, like lasagne or brisket with mac 'n' cheese, and serve it in a slab of salted-up Ten Four Bakehouse focaccia. To our editor, who likes a minimum of three types of veg (no, not including potatoes), the meal-in-a-meal, double carb concept is faintly terrifying. But when the weather's cold, you're on something approaching a hangover, or you're a person who likes a serious lunch minus the wait, the kitchen might just be on to something. Take the shepherd's pie edition, where you get slow-cooked, braised lamb, roasted garlic mash, crispy potatoes, pickled veg and red wine jus encased in hot focaccia, served up speedily and wrapped in brown paper, so you can eat in or take your monster back to the office. It shouldn't work and yet we chomped our way through the construct still not entirely sure if we were in the presence of total genius, or the other option. Sample menu