Up front, I want to acknowledge that the world doesn’t need more Paris v. New York content, especially from a non-Parisian, non-New Yorker. Still, I’ve noticed something here, again and again, that feels worth noting. The first time I heard it, I took it as a fluke of that particular street. But there it was the next day, and the one after that. Every day, as the lunch hour approaches, the city fills with the sound of clinking utensils. It’s not just that people are eating lunch. They’re eating it outdoors, in public, at tables, with silverware! Every day!
In New York, I ate all sorts of lunches. Working at the Strand, I would go for Vanessa’s dumplings or a slice of Joe’s pizza, both just a few blocks away. Sometimes I’d bring food from home, but I was never organized enough to pack it regularly, and there were times when the basement microwave had a roach in it or the fancy second-floor breakroom didn’t have enough chairs. That, and there was something terrible about staying in that one building all day, especially during the holiday season when there was near constant press of tourist and tinseled seasonal chaos. Sometimes I didn’t even eat much on my lunch break, just wandered around the city, seeing as far as I could walk and still turn back in time. In the winter, I worked at the holiday market booth in Bryant Park, and occasionally at the kiosk in Times Square. I don’t remember what I ate on those days, really. I would come home frozen to the marrow and ravenous, pawing through the kitchen for anything I could eat quickly, often without tasting it.
The next place I worked was a charity attached to an Investment Bank. I learned a few weeks in that when I worked in the main office over lunch hour, even as a contract employee, the company would pay for my meals. A free lunch – no such thing, of course. But having had it, I can understand why it merits its own cautionary reminder. Has there ever been anything as convincing as a free lunch? How many easy excuses can you make for a job that gives you a hot meal every day? I started timing my working hours around lunch and I was given free rein on Seamless with the company card. Heather, the office manager and my friend, would handle the actual ordering, and there were technically no spending limits. We had sushi, noodles, dumplings, matzoh ball soup – and sometimes sandwiches, to give the appearance of restraint. It became the most exciting part of the day. I’d count down the minutes until it was appropriate to walk over to Heather’s desk with a lunch proposal. The company eventually cancelled the lunch policy. I quit not long after.
Later, when I started working at a tech start-up, I learned that a working lunch in New York could have a format. A meal was reduced to its functional parts: protein, starch, vegetable, sauce, “crunch”; and this formula could be applied across any regional cuisine to create a paired-down, choose-your-own-adventure style lunch that allowed a person to feel highly individual without exerting too much effort. It was like a toddler’s exercise in decision making, a series of small and largely inconsequential choices that resulted in the basic success of survival. I’d stand in line with my coworkers or alone with my phone and within fifteen minutes I’d be handed a biodegradable bowl with a plant-based plastic lid. I’d take it back to the office to eat at the communal table, or eventually – when I grew into an illusion of self-importance – at my desk. When we were acquired by a bigger, glossier tech company, lunch became a spectacular event, something I often invited friends over to see. It spilled out over six different floors: salad bars, hot specials, vegan options, a ramen concept station, avocados rolling in deep white ceramic bowls, kombucha, a cafe. Sandwiches, of course, for the appearance of restraint. All of it was free, and all of it was in our massive skyscraper which looked over all of New York harbor. People would talk about quitting their jobs sometimes, and they’d inevitably start listing the things that would be impossible to leave. The benefits, the people. And always: lunch.
My mother has a special category of experiences that she says are like violin music. When they’re good, they the best; and when they’re anything other than good, they’re abominable. Lunch can be a little like that. When it’s yummy, it can be fantastic – but most days, it’s just fuel with the fumes of disappointment. In New York it was often reheated or steamed in its own container on the journey back to the office. And once it was done, work was waiting on the other end. Blogs were built on an entire genre of food writing that was about how to make lunch bearable: tips for how to store your your salad dressing and how much to batch-cook on Sundays. Lunch was, in other words, a chore, and if it wasn’t, that itself was a surprise. If anything, it could feel like an inconvenient reminder of your body in the middle of the workday, something that had to be – unfortunately – remedied on company time.
I’m sure people take desk lunches in Paris. I’m sure others eat it on the go. And many of course don’t eat at all, and not by choice. I also want to say I haven’t seen much evidence of a particular Parisian work/life balance. It seems like Parisians work hard, sometimes too hard, in jobs they don’t like very much. But there still does seem to be a lunch hour in this city, and not a private one taken with a computer screen, but a proper one in public with friends. People order prefix menus and charge them to their Ticket Restaurant cards. They eat on plates. The restaurants feel happy to be full. The glassware and the utensils clink their approval from around 12:30-2pm, when things inevitably start to quiet down and the staff begin preparing for the dinner rush. Just this week I watched through the window as the chefs in a restaurant by the Jardin du Palais Royal delicately began plating dishes at 11:30, anticipating hungry patrons. It was quiet as could be, but I knew, as they did, that the people would be coming. Maybe it’s not the same people every day. Maybe it’s just my tourist’s eye, projecting. But I like to see people eating, and one gets the feeling that maybe Paris does too. I like to walk by and hear the conversations – all the words I don’t know yet, and in between them, of course, the clinking.
word count: 1138 (!)
Ana Olson 