The long goodbye to the long lunch

Covid just about killed lunch. The patient was already on the critical list: anyone who dined between 2008 and 2020 could see the signs: the absence of wine, the presence of briefcases and ‘business papers’, the prevalence of‘healthy food’, the disappearance of the cheese board in favour of ‘Just the bill, thank you.’ Lunch, in all its sybaritic splendour, and sense of time suspended, lunch as a celebration of idleness and debauchery, was already dead. Covid merely administered the last rites. When Le Gavroche, the last bastion of gourmandism, announced it would no longer open for lunch, it was merely confirming our worst fears. Lunch was dead.