I was out in the City at lunchtime, not far from St Paul's, and found myself amid a horde of businessfolk buying lunch. They were flocking to nearby shops, mainly specialist food outlets, for a calorific haul to tide them over into the afternoon. You could tell it was peak lunchtime because many places had queues coming out of the door, each comprising smart folk in suits and jackets, shirts and brogues, trainers and pullovers, all the workwear tropes. Such patience. Then they strode back to their offices carrying trays and bowls, many in paper carrier bags, to eat at their desks while catching up on events or completing urgent work tasks. It never used to be like that.
In my day we had a canteen. It was on the top floor with its own kitchen and everything, even a chef (or at least a restaurant manager as the official title had it). We'd go up every lunchtime and pick a meal from the heavily-subsidised menu, then sit down in the dedicated space and discuss news, gossip and various fruit-based topics while we ate. It provided a proper break in the middle of the day, enhanced workforce cohesion and was also carefully nutritionally balanced to be good for you. Everyone loved it because the food was patently cheap. I loved it because it enabled me to have a proper meal in the middle of the day so I didn't need to cook when I got home. And my workplace loved it because it kept us in the building and generally back at our desks quicker than if we'd been let loose to buy food elsewhere.
Our canteen had a proper serving counter and a choice of main meals, one obviously vegetarian, plus a selection of cooked vegetables of diverse provenance to enhance variety. Chips only appeared on Fridays, always in combination with 'fish and', which I suspect gave cooking staff an easy end to the week. A separate counter offered lighter bites, a salad bar kept those with lighter palates satisfied and there was always soup if nothing else appealed (or if you had to be back at your desk sharpish). We took it very much for granted, muttering repeatedly about whether they'd given us enough potatoes, pouring an extra ladle of custard over the pudding and revelling once a year when they pulled out all the stops to deliver a proper Christmas dinner. But it didn't last.
The rot set in when a proper coffee shop opened on the ground floor. This started taking trade away from the canteen whose coffee was serviceable but not frothy, and although it wasn't direct lunchtime competition it must have had a considerable financial impact. Or perhaps the rot set in when they cut the number of non-veg main courses from two to one. This meant you either liked today's meal or you didn't, and that meant you were more likely to be unhappy and to start to look elsewhere. Or perhaps the rot set in more gradually as younger employees shunned the canteen in favour of spicy bowls and fried chicken purchased elsewhere, preferring choice over convenience, returning to eat their spoils at tables alongside those of us still loyal to a plated option.
There's no canteen at work these days, so I'm told, because a steady terminal decline set in. First they downgraded to lighter meals, enabling them to lose several staff, then it all went a bit soup, salad and sandwiches, then it vanished altogether. The pandemic won't have helped, nor the subsequent increase in working from home, making a subsidised workplace canteen too inefficient a use of company funds. And so 'going out for lunch' became the new default, there being no easy way to stay in, and my company's employees joined hordes of other companies' employees in the queues for rammed sourdough, spicy trays and noodly bowls. Palates have changed for sure, but the economic default has also moved on from in-house subsidy to full-price external traders.
I looked round Paternoster Square (where these photos were taken) and watched the suited crew queueing patiently wherever lunchtime food was offered. Queues at itsu, queues at Nusa, queues at Hop, all offering their own take on southeast Asian cuisine. Elsewhere Middle Eastern options, Indian options, Mexican options. Then Pret, Nero and Paul for wraps and baked goods, also Sainsburys and the Co-Op for the basics. The broad spread of outlets means you can easily join a different queue every day of the week, which is ace, but the queues are longer than anything my canteen generated and the price is higher too. I paid less than £4 for my proper sit down meal, admittedly several years ago, but you won't get even half a cold bowl of bits for that today.
Perhaps the absolute pinnacle of lunchmarket-targeting is Farmer J, an impressively generic purveyor of wholesome fare for worthy stomachs. Its signature dish is the 'fieldtray', a simply-compiled mix of base (rice, grains or salad), main (meat, salmon or vegetables) and two sides (e,g. kale, miso slaw or tahini aubergine). The end result isn't specific to any national cuisine, the multiplicity of options provides variety and all the vegetables are locally sourced. Presentation reminds me of an airline meal, and perhaps portion size too, but it slips back easily to the office and can be rapidly forked down. In fact it turns out 'Farmer J' is a former banker from Notting Hill called Jonathan who took a punt on the lunchtime market and hit the spot so it's all a carefully-constructed illusion, but at £12 a time a surprisingly successful one.
Obviously you could still make your own lunch at home and bring it in, but Tupperware doesn't impress folk these days and many consider all that preparation to be far too much effort. Obviously you could just buy sandwiches or a meal deal if you're on a budget, but then you get to look defeatist in the breakout zone surrounded by exotic tubs and bowls. Obviously some locations have proper streetfood rather than all this manufactured muck, but grabbing some kind of spicy package is more of a zeitgeist default than it ever used to be. And obviously some places still have canteens, especially the biggest workplaces, but nipping out for lunch is the new default amongst those who would previously have stayed in. And so we find thousands of hungry office workers thronging the streets, trays in hand or bags a-dangling, as the private sector cheerily soaks up the lunchtime market. You get a lot more choice without a canteen, but you pay a lot more for the privilege.
