Lunch: the middle child of meals. I actually don’t know much about birth order and what it means for your personality, as I’m an only child and thus only care about myself and my experience (jk, kind of). But I do know a lot about lunch and would not be lying when I said it occupies like 15% of my daily thoughts.
This is not new adult behavior for me, I was always someone who cared about lunch. When I was little my mom would make me the most elaborate lunches to take with me to school. She would make me build-your-own chicken tacos, each component wrapped in the pastel colored Saran Wrap, one little package of shredded roast chicken, one of chopped lettuce, one of shredded cheese, and another with mini taco shells. I was excited for lunch every day, because I thankfully grew up in a house that cared about food and also ate healthy foods and treats. I was never jealous of a Lunchable.
When we’re growing up, lunch is the fun break in the day where you get to sit around a table with your friends and talk and joke and sometimes trade Chips Ahoy for a TastyKake Peanut Butter Kandy Kake (a good trade, in my opinion). But in adulthood it changes into something else. I guess the problem is work.
I’ve written about lunch before, for Eater, but I've been thinking about it a lot recently. My relationship to it keeps changing in a way that it doesn’t for breakfast and dinner. I go through my breakfast phases, but I keep it simple no matter what the rest of my life looks like: a yogurt, a piece of toast, maybe a hardboiled egg, and a ton of iced coffee (and on hungover days, an egg and pepperjack on a roll, obviously). Dinner stands as the exciting meal, maybe I’m cooking, maybe I’m eating out. And even if I’m lazy and reheating freezer pizza or grabbing tacos between spots, I’m happy. But lunch continues to be vexing.
When I worked in an office job, lunch felt a bit like it did back in school days. It was my break. When I worked at Random House I could zip down to the commissary and buy something reasonably priced or schlep down the turkey wrap or leftover stir fry I brought and sit at a table to chat or read or stare into the middle distance away from my desktop computer. I looked forward to Thursdays or Fridays when I would excitedly leave the building to grab fancy soup from the famous Seinfeld “Soup Nazi” soup stand which was one block away, or a luxury sandwich as a treat.
As my day jobs took me on a tour of everything midtown had to offer (not much) I had years of very specific lunch preferences. For many years before it went downhill (I assume thanks to private equity), I was a big fan of Pret-a-Manger and their half sandwiches. I’d get the balsamic chicken half sandwich on a baguette for a while at a job in the garment district. When working in midtown east during what I would call my “eating disorder adjacent era” my go to was the 220 calorie moroccan lentil soup.
While temping at a bridal magazine I began my now years long feud with the salad chain Chop’t that involved several letter writing campaigns that went nowhere. I like salad but have always been underwhelmed by the chains and their offerings. But Chop’t had one truly great salad on their menu that I honestly still think about from time to time. It was called the NorCal Cobb, and it was a base of baby kale with turkey, bacon, tomato, avocado, pickled red onion, piquillo peppers, sharp cheddar, and sourdough croutons all tossed in a green goddess dressing. I had it once a week as a reward for not throwing my office chair through a window. And then one day it was gone. When I asked one of the salad artists if they could just make it, they said no because several of the ingredients had been removed from stores. I curse the executive who made that decision to this day.
Then I started working in television. When I was at Maisel, lunch was covered by production, and every day around 11:30 our writers PA would email where we were ordering lunch from and attach a menu and we’d send back our choices and an hour or so later it was on our desks. Once production started, I would then also wander down to craft services and see what they had as a supplement. Sometimes they were doing bespoke juices, sometimes huge settings of fresh fruit, sometimes a sliced filet mignon station. Once there was a raw bar.
When I worked in late night shows, we ate crew meal with production and had less control, which was at once infuriating for someone like me who can be particular (not picky), but also freeing for someone who thinks about food all the time and can at times be paralyzed by decision to the point that I eat three string cheese instead of choosing where to go.
The pandemic changed so many things for so many people, but I think a huge and under-researched element of lockdown and work from home is the way it changed how we eat, especially lunch. For ten years I was virtually never in my home between the hours of 9am and 9pm, then suddenly I was there all day every day for months. Meals became the only way to mark the passing of time. Dinner was a thrilling transition from day to night, when the computer was closed and the tv was on and I could spend an hour drinking and stirring and chopping and then sitting and eating and lounging. But lunch got lost.
I remember reading Amanda Mull’s article about meals and it immediately resonated with me: big meal! In those days that bled to nights and weeks that bled to months, I was a big fan of big meal (aka, having one big meal that kind of anchors the day and then more snacking in place of other, more tradition and capitalism created, “meals”).
And while I still work mostly from home, I no longer am a big meal person. I have dinner plans and nighttime outings in my life that take the pressure off of the meals I eat at home to be as important.
Most of my days are writing and podcasting from home. I wake up and have whatever little breakfast routine I’m in at the moment (it is currently a rice cake with ricotta and fruit or cottage cheese and chili crisp). And then a few hours later I’m hungry again and most days I just absolutely panic. I just don’t know what the hell lunch is anymore. And I love lunch!
One of my favorite things on earth is a good turkey sandwich. The best iteration is what Natasha Pickowicz and I call “The Friendship Sandwich,” as we explained it to our friend Daniela at the Washington Post and also to our alma mater’s website, Cornellians. It’s about high quality turkey and some sharp cheddar and then piled high with every vegetable and green you can get your hands on. It’s almost a handheld salad. It is one of my favorite foods but, making one requires a little forethought and the heat to be bearable enough to walk over to Union Market to get the good turkey and I don’t always have the time or energy.
Some days I just have a piece of fruit for breakfast and then whip up some eggs and toast or, if my fridge is ready for it, my famous breakfast tacos (the key is to keep hash brown patties in the freezer and crisp one up to slice in half to put in the bottom of each of two tacos then topping it with scrambled eggs, cheese, pico, and hot sauce). Some days I’ll make a big dumb salad. Some days I’ll make a grilled cheese. Some days I’ll pick at leftovers from whatever I cooked for the week and then pat myself on the back for eating food I paid for and cooked.
Many days I do what I call “Snack Lunch,” a term coined when I was writing for The President Show. Non-production writing days we would sometimes eat while working on segments. Most people would bring the sandwich they ordered or their leftovers. I would walk down to one of our EPs offices with what looked like a bag of groceries: hummus, tortilla chips, a string cheese, a small bag of grapes, some sliced cucumber I brought, a packet of turkey jerky I took from the kitchen. I’d set up my “mezze spread” as Pete Grosz called it and snack my way through getting our Act II together. These days that spread involves my new favorite lunch bit which is chicken salad from Winner Butcher scooped into endive leaves. I’m basically Ina Garten.
Occasionally I run out to grab lunch or happen to be out of the house for some reason. If I’m west of the Gowanus canal, I sojourn to Court Street Grocers for the Uncle Grandpa (roast turkey, pickled fennel, sumac vinaigrette, arugula because I’m at best mayo neutral if not vaguely non-mayo in my sandwich life). If I’m uptown doing my favorite Bravo podcast, Andy’s Girls, I’m lucky enough to be close to one of the best chicken caesar wraps in the city at Milano Market. If I’m near Barclays I can scoop up something from Brooklyn Larder, though they got rid of their perfect roast beef sandwich with horseradish cream and arugula.
My lunch panic has left me scrambling for some sense of what other people do for lunch. I eat it every day, but sometimes it’s a friendship sandwich at noon because I can’t stop thinking about the Sky Top turkey breast in the fridge, sometimes it’s a handful of Bjorn Quorn and a cold chicken tender at 3:30 because I got caught up in writing and forgot.
I hoped maybe people I know would have more clarity on midday eating. So I asked some of my friends the question: What does lunch look like for you?
Dan Perlman, Writer/Comedian/Cat Owner
Okay, so probably 2-3 days a week, I’ll get the #3 wrap from the coffee place near me, which I really enjoy. It’s egg white, mushroom, avocado on a whole wheat wrap, which maybe sounds whatever, but I promise, it just melts in your mouth, it’s very good. The way they grill it or whatever. Good stuff. I’ll generally have lunch at my apt. Sometimes I’ll scramble eggs or I’ll make a salad or grilled cheese or something. But if I were to rank everything in the lunch rotation, that wrap would be at the damn top.
Natasha Pickowicz, Writer/Chef/Cat Owner
I used to work in restaurants full time, so for over a decade I ate what's called "family meal" for lunch (a giant buffet of odds and ends made by line cooks in a rush, usually consumed in 4 minutes while standing up over a trash can before service officially begins). Now that I'm out of restaurants and write full time, most of the time I'm at home and on my own for lunch. I prefer to save my for dinners (martinis) out and so lunch is usually patched together with whatever I have in the fridge or pantry—which ironically is how line cooks approach making family meal, too. Some things never change! I literally eat beans every day and they form the base of most of my lunches. I'll "stretch" leftovers by adding a cup of chickpeas or lentils and frying everything in olive oil until sizzling and delicious-smelling. Usually this is a bit of old rice or cold pasta or boiled potato. I'll add a big handful of herbs from my garden, like dill and chives and parsley and basil and oregano, and finish with a giant splash of good vinegar and fermented calabrian chili, two things that improve any and all meals. I love a big bowl of brown mush! This is the fuel that keeps me working for through the afternoon, because it's actually 100000x more exhausting staying awake in front of a computer screen than it is feeding 100 people for lunch.
Liza Treyger, Comedian/Podcaster/Cat Appreciator
I mostly eat lunch in my bed with something on the laptop. My favorite is a salmon avocado roll and sweet potato avocado roll from new mizu sushi with a can of Diet Coke or an iced coffee from mud. A lot of times my lunch and breakfast is one thing so it’s a bagel situation or I love jimmy John’s in a hotel bed with bbq chips in it. Time is between 11-3. If I go out for lunch like meet by or friends I think it’s sandwich, but my favorite lunch of all time is New York Togo sushi lunch specials!
Ashley Hamilton, Comedian/Podcaster/Dog Owner
I would venture to say lunch is the most important meal of the day. I’m not saying breakfast is skippable but you can get away with whatever you have lying around. Lunch, on the other hand can’t be too heavy or too light because your entire life can fall apart. If I just pick at things I’ll kill someone by dinner and if I eat something massive I get nothing done by dinner. I don’t know how Europeans drink at lunch they’re crazy. Working from home I try to keep ingredients for some kind of grain bowl around because it makes me feel like I succeeded at something. If I’m out and about I try to find the nearest lunch street (look near office areas they always have a chipotle, sweetgreen, cava, etc) and I get the correctly made version of my grain bowl.
MORE STUFF! MORE STUFF!
I know this is already all food talk, but down here in recommendation land I’m not reading anything new, but I am enjoying my all time favorite afternoon drink every day: espresso and tonic. Try it. Live out loud!!!
Ruined vacation month continues with Daughters of Darkness. And get your tickets for M3gan 2.0 live on 7/20 ANNNNND our live and in person show in New York at Caveat Friday 8/15 while we ruin the new I Know What You Did Last Summer right to your actual faces (if you live nearby).
Welcome to Talk Town went digital this week with a zoom episode of the core crew!
I was on JTrain this week for Chit Chat Wednesday discussing pools and bbqs, naturally.
Josh and I are hosting Sup Bro for our friend Robert Dean’s 40th birthday at Union Hall Sunday 7/27 at 5pm! Maybe Robert will bring his puppet Bob...
Have you tried the turkey sandwich from Brooklyn Hero Shop? Apparently the internet is raving!
RIP to the Larder roast beef - I do love their BEC on that biscuit! Perfection at all times of the day!