in this week's newsletter! I realised I'd been pretty serious for some weeks so I wrote quite a daft list on the things which make me realise that, at heart, I'm still extremely French, even after 16 years here: youngvulgarian.substack.com/p/10-ways-in...
Being Swedish, and thus proper-lunch-eating, I suffer whenever I end up in the North Atlantic Sandwich Lunch Belt. (Consisting of The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway)
Do you mean Swedes are different from Danes and Norwegians?
Ahahaha
I was extremely intimidated by French lunchtime when I was an IT consultant at a factory for a week. I went into the cafeteria the first day, walked around in bafflement then walked out again. I left my desk every day after (can’t stay!) and just walked the perimeter for an hour.
Got caught out in France last week by all the cute little shops being shut between 1pm-3pm for lunch, despite throngs of tourists wandering around looking for things to do. Have massive respect for the commitment to having a proper lunch over the small matter of making money!
I concur. Never eat lunch at my desk, always try to take a full hour. In winter we make soup.
“I do not want anarchic little foods throughout the day. That's no way to live.” This will be the root cause of the great ADHD schism
Julianna I need STRUCTURE in my life! the chaos is in my head already! I need the outside of my brain to be NEAT! (this has proved to be a source of conflict with my boyfriend, who is closer to the Chaos ADHD end of the spectrum, but we're working on it)
At a new job in Brussels I fixed a meeting at 2.30, and was (gently) scolded for having it at “lunch time”! Soon learnt to take a decent lunch break. In Brits’ defence, we rarely take much time for lunch in London b/c long commutes mean people want to leave promptly at the end of the working day.
You are truly human and humane.
Why are there sandwiches in the fucking pharmacy, 11 years in London and it still freaks me out
This is indeed a very French take - and I’m all for it.
Probably no need to mention that Southern Europe will rally to the French side here with comparable fervor
I love it!
Lovely synchronicity with a podcast talking about General Joffre and his amazing lunches.
I love this. I love lunch. It should be special. It should be a proper break, and something delightful, or at least thoughtful. I also think it is generally more special than dinner. In fact, if I have had a good lunch, I sometimes skip dinner.
I am not French, but I am now a Directeur of a French company (we are based outof Lyon), and I am applying for a French live work visa, so maybe I will have more lunches in France soon.
This is the fault of capitalism. Everything used to stop for Lunch. Every office and shop was closed between 1pm and 2pm. There were proper meals served up in factory canteens. Only in the 80s did this begin to disappear.
Is having a quick lunch in front of the computer allowed if it's to facilitate a 1.5 hour break doing something?
Agree. A sandwich for lunch is an admission of failure
My 54 year old Paris-born, Lyon-dwelling cousin visited recently and exactly this. For giggles he occasionally texts me of an evening to ask "Il y aura quoi sous la cloche ce soir?" :)
I was once on a cross channel ferry and was amused no end to see a French couple whip out a white table cloth to go with their 3 course meal plus bottle of wine. During a 11/2 hr crossing. On ne badine pas avec le déjeuner.
There's a protestant (?) psychology that says first you work, then you can relax. And actually if you don't feel like you've completed all your tasks for the day, attempting to relax is just pure stress. It's awful. And of course no-one gets any work done after a decent lunch.
Plato’s cave where they see that warm delicious midday meals are possible
This is why I uphold the great northern tradition of calling the middle meal dinner, not lunch. Lunch is a snack taken on the move. Dinner demands a seat, a plate and cutlery.
I totally concur with you, lunch needs to be savoured.
11 years living on the continent, and I'm still sat here at my desk, eating a quick sandwich (and reading Bluesky). Meanwhile everyone else in my office has disappeared... It's hard the other way round too!
Why don't you go out!
i can hear the French in this, angry, incensed. not taking lunch seriously? barbaric!
omg YES. It took less than three years in France to convert me to a lifetime of fundamental belief that lunch begins at 12.30, ends at 14.00, includes a glass of decent house red, is likely spent with half a dozen colleagues, and should be 80% paid for by employer-subsidised restaurant vouchers.
When I was 19 I worked at a Singer warehouse in Paris. In addition to spare parts for sewing machines & appliances, there were bolts of fabric in plastic bags in piles 8' tall. After a lunch in the cafeteria, just as you describe, I would climb a stepladder, dive into a fabric pile, and take a nap.
now that is the way to organise things!
Changing subject, I once again offer you a free copy of In Formation #3, as its entire focus is pretty much 'Silicon Valley as a personality disorder.' (A point many of its contributors, including me, have been making for a quarter century or longer.) DM if you want a copy. bsky.app/profile/dave...
This is the way. Unfortunately, my workplace (where I am about 30% more productive) is 60–75 minutes from home, door to door. Tacking 90-120 minutes of lunch onto that would turn 10 hours of working day into 12.5. Inheriting vast wealth from a heretofore unknown uncle is the obvious solution.
But I do love a good lunch and will sometimes stay out longer than expected.
and honest to fuck we got more work done than in a morning of meetings, during the final 10 minutes when food was eaten, work-talk was allowed to intrude so as to sort out the two or three main things that needed doing across depts and teams.
yes! or at the absolute, absolute very least it should be a solo full half hour - not a minute less - sitting down properly and not looking at work at all! I don't know how else people can live!
Belgium agrees with you. On the couple of occasions I attempted to eat lunch at my desk, my boss shooed me off to take a proper break.
absolutely. solo lunches now rein and they are SACRED
My first meeting at France Telecom’s office in Issy-les-Moulineaux, we had lunch in the canteen. Steak frites were being continually cooked to order, there were artichokes, there was wine! (grim gut rot but wine none the less). I came back to the UK and a stale ham sandwich
Oh and I recognised the offices as having been used in “Alphaville” which made the whole meeting perfect. Sigh. I’m going to have to pop over and see the cousins, aren’t I.
I think you are!
They do appreciate a bear there :) Well if next month’s 6 monthly checkup goes well then I shall renew my passport (“Eye colour - Gorm”) and make plans for a trip early in the new year. www.musee-orsay.fr/en/artworks/...
paws crossed for it! (btw I recently renewed my passport and genuinely couldn't believe how smooth the process was)
that just sounds incredible. of course I'm state monopolies etc. etc. but I bet the working conditions of that marvellous era were excellent! one of my sisters came to live with me for a year and go to secondary school. they had a full sit-down lunch each day, students and teachers.
France did state monopolies properly :) I always enjoyed working with them. Cultured culchie vibes :)
I'm taken for a very foreign weirdo when I enforce my one hour break for lunch just so I can physically get away.from my.desk, walk a bit, and eat while reading my boom. My mental health would have taken a nosedive without this.
yes, it's crucial. now that I WFH permanently I don't need the escape factor as much but I absolutely could not do normal office employment, other people, meeting blah blah, and public face 8 hours a day without a real break. (frankly I can no longer do it at all)
My colleagues are lovely and really like to eat together but now accept my need to spend my middagpauze alone. As well as eating (away from my desk) I need to have at least 30 minutes without interacting with people.
I have run from the building into the snow rather than sit in the staffroom while people microwave soup and talk about work. Or traffic. And they are all horrified that I want to leave and "waste money", even if it's Costa mac n cheese because that's the only food place I can reach in time.
If not at lunch and under influence, where do Brits make courageous and consequential business decisions, and how!!?
I’m pretty keen on breakfast, lunch and dinner
This is the piece they're going to use against you in court when the Reform deportations start
English citizenship survey: Q8. Is lunch: a. Onion soup, a baguette, cheese and wine? b. A Greggs Steak Bake eaten in the street? c. A Spoons all day breakfast with a pint of lager?
d.what your Northern friends call dinner
Sadly too many of us, working on the UK work treadmill, have had to get used to dining 'al desko'
I spent a term in a French lycée after finishing in the UK and was AMAZED at the three course lunches.
Totally agree on this. The French get the important things right like Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, et Déjeuner.
I blame the insidious nature of the "Protestant work ethic"! The French tend to be a little bit more... 'Catholic'.
ok you guys seem to be enjoy this so I will suggest, kindly: why not take out a subscription? ideally a paying one so I can keep writing and pay my bills, and so on, but a free subscription would also be dandy?
The late great Keith Waterhouse had similar sentiments regarding lunch. So much so, he wrote a book about it.
The (lack of) quality to be found in lunches in cafes in the UK would regularly enrage Katie.
50+ years ago a proper dinner at lunchtime was the norm in Britain. Shops shut , many workers went home for a cooked meal . All changed when the great idol Work was revered . Influence of London commuter belt, luncheon vouchers, maybe
Just about every lunch I've ever eaten in my office years. 😥😠
BTW regarding lunch, Lewis Hamilton is finding it hard at Ferrari to understand why all his engineers leave the factory floor for a cooked lunch (to be fair maybe at Ferrari they should work through lunch, the results on the track might improve😂).
I would be scared to drive a car engineered by Italians deprived of a proper lunch, especially if that was my personal initiative!
I have been in the UK 34 years, I am still Italian and I am happy and proud it will never leave me.
it’s 50 degrees and spitting rain year-round, why are they not eating warm lunches
don't ask me!!!
You think it rains in London? 😆
Bravo
The British attitude to lunch is defined by their attitude to work. The French work to live, and far too many Brits live to work.
I often don't eat at all until 10pm. If I do have something earlier it will be around 4pm. But if someone puts food in front of me I will eat at anytime.
I was really radicalised by this when I lived in France. The opportunity to sit down with colleagues, eat a proper meal and chat was a proper break which allowed you to go back for the afternoon refreshed. I still miss it, 20 years later.
I was horrified by the sandwich-at-your-desk culture when I got back to England and did a temp job in an office!
The team that put the zinc roof on my self-build house, though based in Edinburgh, were all French. Every day at noon they'd cook lunch for themselves in the unfinished room that would become my study. It always smelled deliciously of garlic and herbs. So much better than a Greggs pie and Irn Bru.
When I first started working in the mid-80s, a whole bunch of us would go to the pub and eat proper cooked food, and take at least an hour - so it’s not always been this way, I think.
gods, the crisps
Fresh outta the chunnel
Legitimately think the answer to this is found in comparing British and French fresh produce. British produce is so bland and flavourless that it makes lunch a chore, not a meal. In France even the produce in the cheapest supermarkets is better than UK fare, so it's much easier to enjoy lunch.
With you on lasagne and garlic bread. If they're put in front of me I'll eat them both, because they are both delicious carbs, but it's not how I'd design a meal.
Thank you!! I just don't get it!!
I do not understand the chip butty, and I do not intend to.
I love the story that Paris lost the Olympics in part because Chirac insulted both British and Finnish food. A proper president.
I’d put the Tesco lunchtime meal deal on the flag if I could. They should enshrine it in law.
Is the meal deal a chilled sandwich, a drink and a packet of crisps? This would not fly in Belgium or France.
Co-op let you have a Ginsters pasty instead of the crisps. Pasty + Triple sarnie + Drink for the win 🤣
Only if you’re an uncreative meal deal buyer
Steak Pudding, chips, mushy peas and gravy would be my choice on the flag!
FINALLY lunch gets the attention it deserves (I am very much team solo lunch but that's because I consider it a treat and it a restorative break to enjoy it alone, not because I want to absentmindedly chew while working)
I fear I will never be gastronomically welcome in France
Eat better! Love yourself!
Go to any bar or restaurant here in Asturias and you’ll see tables of working men and women eating the menú de día. And the retired who can stay a bit longer for the sobremesa!
Papa Joffre is smiling in his grave.
Earlier generations, esp possibly in the North, did do cooked, sit-down lunch. Called it dinner in fact. Not sure what happened. Probably declined when more women started working outside the home.
Wholehearted agreement from this lunching Scotsman.
What is the point of a fancy lunch if you have to go back to work? Just delaying the inevitable. Having said that, I have had lunch in the Armée de l'Air officers' mess as well as NATO HQ in Brussels and I can see where you are coming from.
As a Brazilian living in the UK for the past 13 years, I’m a signatory of the Lunch Treaty, such as you
Vraiment however I note that, when I visit brewers in Montpellier, they offer burgers too often. Yuck.
Went to Sciences Po for a lecture but first got taken out for a delicious, relaxed lunch and just a wonderful conversation with four colleagues. Heaven! So incredibly civilised 🌻😎
Interestingly most of these are « things I have realised are better in Belgium than in England » having made the journey in the opposite direction (bar a wrong turn at Lille Europe) ten years ago. Except 5, which I knew thanks to the outrage of @dzyrl.bsky.social’s Belgian aunt many years ago.
Quite right. No other activity than eating lunch to take place between midi and 2pm.
My husband worked for a year in Paris at a big company commuting from London, his French colleagues thought he was a barbarian when he ate lunch at his desk which wasn’t even all the time He was cramming his hours in because of the commute though