Where to eat lunch in London

Is the brain the stomach of the mind?

Hi. I planned to write a list of my favourite places to eat lunch, but realised I was leaning into a cycle of procrastination which has been keeping me up to minimum 3am recently. So I will alternate lunch spots with things that are keeping me up at night, I guess like we’re having lunch together, and I hope that’s enjoyable for you.

I don’t really go in for lunch and it doesn't feature prominently in my life. I’d much rather eat a sort of breakfast/lunch amalgam (word for this?) and then have a little 450cal capitalist-death-drive treat at tea time. This means that the places I eat lunch tend to fall into ‘lady of leisure’ (essentially dinner during the day), or ‘not even sitting down while waiting for it to be prepared’ (sudden overwhelming hunger on the hoof). There are some exceptions but in general what makes something a lunch place is: it’s not the first thing I’m eating that day/I’m not ordering coffee with my meal. Normally it actually is the first thing I’m eating that day but I will stand by the rule. Anyway the mental health of my gut (the gut is the brain of the stomach) seems perfectly fine. Is the brain the stomach of the mind? If so I think I have severe acid reflux.

1. Kipferl

   A lunch that can’t be improved on is wiener schnitzel, potatoes, cranberry sauce and a side of sauerkraut. Kipferl do a vegan schnitzel which is so oily you do need to blot it with your napkin before eating, but imo tastes so much like veal I have tried to send it back multiple times. The eavesdropping in this place is also phenomenal (I mean the activity, not some sort of Austrian pudding).

MY TAX RETURN: My therapist says a tenant’s relationship with a bad landlord can replicate abusive or neglectful patterns from childhood. It makes sense to be emotionally triggered by being financially extorted by someone who simply doesn’t care if you live or die. Tax returns can be similarly emotionally devastating. It’s not the cost of it that is particularly bad as long as you don’t think about the fact that your money is paying for hell barges for asylum seekers to commit suicide on. It’s more the process of going through all your incoming and outgoing funds, and then comparing them to your previous years and the year you’re in now, and that not being something that truly makes you question your value as a human being. How could that not be deeply emotionally distressing? So, that’s what’s up! :).

2. Keu

   I enjoy the Banh-mis, iced jasmine tea and, to break my own rule, the iced vietnamese coffees here. I would say the aubergine or coconut curry banh-mi is worth a 14 minute detour from wherever you are. This is to get as a takeaway and eat in front of your laptop btw, because a piece of carrot or crumb on the keyboard is not a disaster. As you picture me doing this, please read Two Sisters of Perspephone by Sylvia Plath.

MY BIRTHDAY: It is my birthday tomorrow and I am turning 34. People telling me I look young now feels like an insult because it draws attention to my fear that I am trapped in a perpetual state of adolescence (which I am). I don’t want to be 34 and by committing it to Substack I can’t even lie about it. Huge error and disaster. Things I learned this year are: portrait mode is actually good and it’s ok that high-waisted jeans do not suit my body type.

3. Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte

   Yes the TikTok place lol. But you can’t argue with not having to order, not having to pick a wine, and getting to sit in a nice room full of divorced middle-class men bonding with their 13-year-old sons. Also, the steak was wonderful. I don’t eat meat but I do eat rare steak and anyone who doesn’t has brain damage of the stomach. The dessert menu is designed beautifully. And then you’re in Marylebone for the afternoon! An overall great thing.

MY CAREER: Maybe don’t want to talk about it, but my goal this year is to have some fiction published and can you imagine how horrifying it feels to be a person who works in advertising saying that????? I desperately want to go off grid. I think. Well what does that actually mean? Does going off grid mean I can’t go to steak restaurants.

4. Farmer J

   Excuse me while I put on my Adam Curtis hat (am I imagining it or does he wear a bowler). Farmer J is a place where I can get a canteen-style cardboard tray containing a selection of vegetable, protein and carb items that, eaten together, are profoundly delicious, nourishing and crushingly depressing. An abridged quote from Ishmael (the “Takers” are essentially us):

   
   "The world of the Takers is one vast prison, and the entire human race is now inside that prison.” Ishmael fixed me with a drooping, moist eye.

   “Naturally a well-run prison must have a prison industry. I’m sure you see why.”

   “Well… it helps to keep the inmates busy, I suppose. Takes their minds off the boredom and futility of their lives.”

   “Yes. Can you name yours?”

   “Our prison industry? Not to hand. I suppose it’s obvious.”

   “Quite obvious, I would say.”

   I gave it some thought.

   “Consuming the world.”

   Ishmael nodded. “Got it on the first try.”
   

   Your compostable jail tray contains honey-sriracha roasted salmon and charred sprouts, fuelling you up for another afternoon selling pixels to bots and dopamine to adult children. Delicious. Ishmael is a great book apols if that is not a good quote. I don’t think I really need to add a section here elaborating on something else that keeps me up at night. Kind of covered it.

5. Phoenicia Food Hall

   For the spinach and feta borek. The Gail’s one is too wet. This one is flaky crispy and perfect.

Goodbye I’m tired now. xoxxx