FT Goes All In on Lunch. Standard Names New Critic. Critics & More.
Hayward back in time to Sweetings. Marina gaga for Cafe Francois. Grace hates Köd. Giles hates phones. Charlotte has one last cocktail at TGI Friday's.
It’s rare that I’m ahead of a trend, but it’s clear that this Substack, which I launched in March, was a few months ahead of the zeitgeist. The whole FT Magazine this weekend was dedicated to the professional lunch (more below), and the Standard joined the cause as well.
So, I have an ask: With interest in lunch at a peak, you might have a colleague or friends talking about and thinking about professional lunches. Could you pass along the Guide? Or share Professional Lunch with them? Or mention Professional Lunch in a LinkedIn post? The movement is growing, and I would love to use this moment to help win more hearts and minds.
It’s the perfect time to share Professional Lunch:
FT Loves Professional Lunch
The FT has joined the Professional Lunch campaign in a big way. Its weekend magazine and accompanying focus page are entirely dedicated to professional lunching, with an array of articles encouraging us to spend more time together over lunch.
The FT deployed some of its (metaphorically) heaviest hitters for views on Professional Lunch:
City Editor Bryce Adler leads off with controversial thought: “Lunchtime gossip used to fuel the City. It’s time for a comeback.” … “No office is so happily industrious that leaving isn’t an escape. No job is so important that it can’t be interrupted by stories someone doesn’t want you to hear. Gossip and lunch pair naturally, because who doesn’t appreciate an opportunity to bisect a workday with word from the grapevine and a two-sip martini?” Adler includes loads of great suggestions for places to have gossipy lunches, and explicitly rejects private clubs.
Management Editor Anjli Raval suggests that the best business lunch spot might be in the countryside. “It’s not that the face-to-face meeting isn’t still valuable; it’s just that people are choosing to do them differently and often outside the domain of corporate dining.”
In the best of the features, Weekend editor Janine Gibson explores her considerable experience of the power lunch, “without men.” Her stories are riveting, and she ends with this: “On a recent trip to Manhattan, where everything happens first, a former colleague and expert networker announced that lunch and Midtown and power restaurants are back, along with everything ’90s. The personal connection, the intimate confessional bonding, the sense of order in a chaotic world established by a maître d’ knowing your name and which table you like, an antidote to anonymity and social media socialising. How thrilling and relieving.”
Wine critic and restaurant maven Jancis Robinson criticises the decline of lunch time drinking and, correctly in my experience, blames the American influence on British working culture.
Food writer Josh Barrie digs into the re-rise of set-menu lunches, and finds an intriguing angle: “Each chef I spoke to told me that set menus help bring in a younger, more diverse crowd.”
Several writers and editors contribute to a listicle of their favourite London spots for a business lunch. A bunch of my favourites are featured, including Otto’s, Wilton’s, Sweetings, The Delaunay, Hawksmoor, and Cloth.
The FT’s foreign correspondents have their own listicle of great places to go for a professional lunch in cities around the world.
A couple of comments from me: I love this FT series, and I can’t believe they built the whole magazine around it. There’s so much great stuff here that it’s hard to know where to begin. But some of it does feel a bit old fashioned.
My view of Professional Lunch is that it can and should be modern. I don’t want us “to go back” to anything. Too often, old-school power lunches were boys-only affairs, taken at the expense of others. That’s no good.
Second, I don’t believe that alcohol is a requirement for a great professional lunch. Wine at lunch is fine in the right circumstances. I delight in the occasional lunch-time glass or two, and adults should be allowed to make their own decisions. But there are so many stories of boozy lunches turning into inappropriate workplace behaviour that they are impossible to ignore. Care, balance, moderation, and respect are essential for a professional lunch.
Third, if you’re organising a professional lunch, real empathy with your guests is required. The crucial point for me is to understand the guest list then choose the place. Don’t drag your vegetarian colleague to the steak place or the person trying desperately to eat better for a French butter bomb. I’m self-aware that my tastes run towards classic places. But not everyone shares my taste. That’s cool. The host — not the guest — should bend.
What this really means: Don’t be exclusionary. The beauty of lunch is that it’s for everyone. Professional breakfast can mean missing the school run, and Professional dinner can result in skipping bedtime. Make sure your own lunch gang is for everyone, too.
What did you think of the FT’s big foray into lunch? Leave a Comment and let me know.
Standard Names David Ellis as New Restaurant Critic
Following last week’s departure of Jimi Famurewa, the Standard has announced David Ellis as its new top critic.
Ellis has been editor of the Standard’s Reveller magazine (whatever that is), written a lot about cocktails, and served deputy critic under Famurewa.
He kicks off his new role with a self-profile.
I have to say that I find this very odd. The Standard has evidently forced out its top critic — a London-native of Nigerian decent who offered a wonderfully diverse range of selections and absolutely tip-top writing — for a white Brit from Caversham who attended law school. I’m sure there’s more to the story. I hope there is.
So I will keep an open mind, and look forward to reading Ellis’s reviews, but for now, it feels like the Standard has made a big mistake and the whole move feels like a step backward.
Final thing: Last week I worried that Famurewa’s exit would mean the end of the restaurant column. I stand corrected and am glad to have been wrong.
Meet for Lunch? Great Conversation Happening Next Week
Given all of this fresh excitement about lunch, maybe you want an excuse to get out for a good one. The next Conversation Over Lunch, in partnership with One Question, is next Thursday, 3 October and provides the perfect opportunity. We’ve got a good group signed up, and one or two places left to go. Please do join us.
We’ve got a humdinger of a question to discuss:
“Do we underestimate the power of hope?”
If you’re interested, please book your spot here.
Red Lobster is Swims On
Back in May, I bemoaned the impending bankruptcy of American seafood stalwart Red Lobster. I worried the whole chain might close down.
I’m happy to report that it’s been saved.
“A bankruptcy judge has approved the chain’s plan for reorganization – including hiring Damola Adamolekun, former chief executive of PF Chang’s, as its new CEO. ‘Red Lobster is now a stronger, more resilient company, and today is the start of a new chapter in our history,’ Adamolekun said.”
Adamolekun also said that “the company’s long-term investment plan included a commitment of more than $60 million in new funding.”
Lobster anyone?
Lunch-Enabler Tupperware Next for Bankruptcy
As much as I crusade against desk-bound lunches, they are a reality for many of us. Batch cooking has helped us make lunches healthier, and bringing lunch to the office is always cheaper than going out.
Tupperware has been a vital element to self-catering office lunches since the 1970s. And Eater reports that it might go to the wall.
In filing for bankruptcy in a U.S. court last week, the company said it is seeking “a sale process for the business in order to protect its iconic brand and further advance Tupperware's transformation into a digital-first, technology-led company.”
Given the general move away from plastics, I think Eater has it right: “While there’s no denying the place that Tupperware has had in … kitchens for the last 70 years, it doesn’t seem like it will have that same place in our future.”
Critics Wrap-Up
✍🏻 indicates a review that you should read for the writing.
🍽️ indicates a place that sounds excellent and is probably worth a try.
✍🏻 🍽️ Tim Hayward (FT) reviews Sweetings, the landmark, throw-back fish spot in the City, as part of the FT Magazine focus on lunch. “I hope Sweetings lives on, unchanged forever.” I visited Sweetings on Friday, and will have my own review next week.
🍽️ William Sitwell (Telegraph) tries Kolamba East, the buzzy new Sri Lankan spot in the City. “Within this restaurant… you’ll meet a menu of brilliant originality and colour.”
✍🏻 Grace Dent (Guardian) checks out Köd, “a dark, cavernous Danish steak restaurant with the odd flash of neon faux glamour. In fact, it reminds me of nothing so much as a Wednesday goth night at a club called Ritzy’s in 1987; it’s also the oddest place I’ve eaten in all year.” … “I rarely describe a restaurant as dystopian, but it strikes me that Köd may well be the future of dining out, once the AI robots rule the Earth.”
Marina O’Loughlin (independent critic) rushes to brand-new Cafe Francois in Borough Market. “New favourite place - as in ‘would happily go there weekly.’ I walk past Cafe Francois virtually every morning. I will try it as soon as I can.
Cafe Francois does hard core French bistro. (Photo by Marina O’Loughlin via Instagram.) 🍽️ Jay Rayner (Observer) discovers Goldies, a new “live-fire” place in Carnaby Street. “Goldies does not charge a premium for doing mostly simple things to your food.”
Giles Coren (Times) visits the Taste of Chongqing near Russell Square. He hasn't really written a review. It’s mostly a column about mobile phone usage. Of the restaurant, he says, “It is not possible to go wrong here.”
🍽️ Tom Parker Bowles (Mail on Sunday) reviews Rochelle Canteen in Shoreditch. It’s “not just an escape from London, but, like all great restaurants, a welcome respite from the daily grind.”
🍽️ Tanya Gold (Spectator) heads to Cloth in Farringdon. “This food is loved, skilled and styled like a Vermeer and so, for me, Cloth is as good a London restaurant as Noble Rot.” My review of Cloth is here.
Gavin Hanly (Hot Dinners) tries Mary’s, Jason Atherton’s replacement for Pollen Street Social. The revamp rejects Michelin star polish in favour of “a more laid-back grill restaurant, cocktail bar and burger counter.”
Jonathan Nunn (Vittles) reviews Hase-Ya, a top sushi spot in Ealing. “Hase-Ya demonstrates that you can make something idiosyncratic and provide quality for value even in the form of a takeaway.”
Chris Pople (Cheese & Biscuits) hits Hainan House in Islington. “Boldly different, great value and smartly presented, even the hilariously precipitous journey to the loos, involving a crazily inclined staircase in three wildly different proportions.”
“Christina” (LOTI) reviews Oh Gee, a new chicken joint at the original Hoxton Hotel. “When it comes to fried chicken, Chef Byungtae Ahn knows what he’s doing – he won Netflix’s K-Chicken War in 2022 and went on to launch 101 Chicken in New Jersey. Now he’s come to the UK.”
Charlotte Ivers (Sunday Times) was in Dartmouth. But speaking of bankruptcy, Charlotte also did an amusing final “review” of TGI Friday’s, after news that it too will soon be going to the wall.
Nick Lander (jancisrobinson.com) tries several Indonesian places in Amsterdam and Harleem.
Thanks so much for reading. Please subscribe if you haven’t and share Professional Lunch with fiends and colleagues. I head to Chiswick for this week’s review which will be out on Thursday. For now, I’m off to lunch.
Gosh it feels strange to think of Tupperware going into administration. Though, as a reusable product, in some ways its expiry is kind of built into the model? Or should be, once it's reached market penetration? Obviously that's not entirely the reason, but it is the shame of more environmentally sustainable solutions: they can be hard to build sustainable businesses around.
Very interesting move from Jimi to David... I also would love to know what actually happened. It does feel strange after Jimi won awards...