'Do you want to be known as someone who’s simply too uptight to take lunch?' A snob’s guide to midweek dining
In her recurring column, Sophia Money-Coutts praises the midweek lunch.
Lunch, during the week? Have you lost your mind? Nobody takes lunch anymore, do they? Not a proper lunch. Nobody has the time. It’s a quick salad at the desk for those traipsing into an office, or a boiled egg on toast for those of us who toil away at home. But a lunch? A proper lunch in a restaurant? Oooh, fancy!
Every now and then, it’s delicious to punctuate the working day with a proper table, and perhaps even a tablecloth. To sit across from someone and converse as if you’re characters in Mad Men. OK, maybe not exactly like that. Go easy on the single malts before you roll back to the office. But is taking an hour or a smidgen more to sit in a restaurant and eat at a civilised pace so very terrible? No, is the short answer. The sky will not fall in. You may even manage two courses. Dare I say it, even a glass of wine. Come on, loosen up. The Europeans do it and they’re not so bad, are they?
The trick, I reckon, is to take a lunch on a relatively quiet day. It’s no good booking a table somewhere decent for a two-courser when you have an important presentation to make that afternoon. Put in a good shift that morning. Send several emails and make yourself known in the office before heading off. Then you won’t necessarily worry about daring to step away from your keyboard for a mere hour or so.
'Coffee, if you need it as a sharpener, followed by a Smint, and you can bounce back to your desk restored and revived'
Enjoy it. Don’t clock watch. Don’t panic as every minute passes that you should, really, be behind your computer. That’s akin to going on holiday and checking your emails every five seconds from the sun-bed, and it’s deeply unrelaxing for your lunching companion, if there is one. Try and switch off. Help yourself to the bread basket. Look at you, out for lunch! What a pleasure. Lunch is for wimps, snarled Gordon Gekko. No, lunch is for the bon viveurs among us, for the radiators, not the drains, for those who like to find the small joys in life rather than give into the gloom. Put it another way, do you want to be known as someone who’s simply too uptight to take lunch? Exactly.
Taking a midweek lunch is also immensely helpful to the struggling restaurant industry, and many do excellent set menus accordingly. Slink into any Noble Rot for two courses at £24, for instance.
At that bastion of sophistication, Bellamy’s, in Mayfair, you get two courses (sea bream ceviche followed by roast poussin, perhaps?) for £38. You may also be able to get a midweek table more easily than an evening one at wildly fashionable joints. Last week, I bagged a 12.15pm midweek table at The Devonshire where they offer a jolly decent set lunch menu of prawn cocktail followed by skirt steak and chips (very Rivals) for £25. If you fancy sticky toffee pudding on top, it’s £29. A bargain. You can barely get a sandwich and crisps in Pret for that, these days.
Coffee, if you need it as a sharpener, followed by a Smint, and you can bounce back to your desk restored and revived. You’ve made something of your day. You’ve got out. You’ve given yourself a little treat. Tomorrow it's the return of the Meal Deal. But today, you lived. You ate a proper lunch. Bravo.
