Lunches on Me

I am very ready to entertain the idea of being paid to eat, just maybe without several hundred people watching me. Spaghetti would be a disaster. Similarly, watching someone on a screen as they enthusiastically race through a takeaway bucket, and tear chicken from a bone with their teeth, ain’t exactly my dream hobby. In South Korea, however, this is a new cultural phenomenon. Muk-bang involves “broadcast jockeys” or BJs (don’t laugh) eating large quantities of food on camera, whilst being watched by thousands of fans that converse and donate money via a chat room. It seems like a bizarre kind of interactive food porn, and some BJs have even become Z-list celebs. Muk-bang stemmed from a national fear of the Korean taboo of eating alone, and for many BJs it fulfils a yearning for love and attention. Here in the West, the whole concept seems alien, niche and almost fetishist. But the sentiment behind Muk-bang is something that we can most probably all relate to.

I.e. lunch breaks. The fear of navigating a lunch break at work can be very real. It’s a bit like dreading going to the school ref on your own; even if you’re so ready for food your tummy has become an opera singer. Single lunch dates seems absolutely fine when they’re anonymous and under the radar, but when it’s in the office cafeteria suddenly social conventions dictate that it’s not so fine. You are vulnerably exposed with nowhere to hide and a sudden realisation that your last mouthful was too ambitious. BJs enjoy being watched while they eat alone, I don’t. I’ve had a few new jobs in the last year undertaking various internships, and the lunch break at each place has been a very different beast.

At M&C Saatchi it was fairly easy to be anonymous, even if you chose to lunch in the Eatrium (you can tell it’s an ad agency can’t you). It’s a pacey company and most people grab food to eat at their desk. The only time I wasn’t anonymous was when I had lunch with my old school friend Matt, who works on O2, and we were ‘papped’ while eating, the email subject line reading ‘that’s not what an agency tour looks like’. Cringe. You might not want to eat alone, but it would seem there is no safety in numbers here. No fun either, if your companion is a nervous work experience girl, incapable of eating or even buying food alone. An exhausting adventure round Soho ensued, and I was pretty miffed that my usual ability to coerce someone into eating where I wanted was thwarted. She cleverly suggested that I surely didn’t want to eat in the Middle Eastern café, and that I didn’t want to queue alone in the salad bar, and that it might be best if we walk over to the bin together at the end of the meal. Obviously bins are the devil so this made sense.

I also met a girl there who landed her job through her lunch break (this sounds like my kind of Muk-bang) when, due to a long queue at the counter, she offered to put an order in for the man next to her. He thought she was trying to pay for his food, and so suggested he probably ought to be the one paying. She hadn’t realised he was the Global Strategy Director, and that she was accidentally networking and ultimately getting herself a position on the grad scheme.

At Indicia, near Chancery Lane, a bustling food market sat right outside the office. A food market + East London = edgy. With this concept nurtured unhealthily within me by social media, I excitedly strode out at 1pm. Here, thought I, is the place to be truly alone and unnoticed, maybe even find the bits of myself I didn’t find travelling on my gap year. However, the market got the better of me. I see myself as a food explorer and adventurer type, but as previously mentioned, I am mainly a creature of habit. I can have phases of eating salt and vinegar McCoys crisps for weeks, so the choice of the market completely overwhelmed me. The first day saw me tackling an absolutely ginormous falafel pitta, its filling going completely akimbo and as a result my face was covered in sweet chilli sauce. I’m mortified that for the rest of my time, I ended up diving into a desperately-wishing-not-to-appear-middle-class coffee shop; one where all the baristas looked as though they’d emerged from the pages of i:D with undershaved haircuts and Nike Roshe trainers. There I found sanctuary in the best brownie I’ve eaten in my entire life. It still haunts my dreams. I comfort myself that although it wasn’t from the exotic food stalls, the barista who owned that coffee shop was probably an Aussie.

I’m now interning at an agency where heading to the cafeteria alone is a safe bet; if you lock eyes with an office pal up there you can just head straight on over and take a seat/I’ve decided that people don’t really have an option and I crash right on in. There’s no room for wallflowers when you’re trying to make friends and I’ve learnt to take the lunch break by the horns. We should be grown up enough not to need escorting to mealtimes, but it’s natural to want to be welcomed into the fold. To quote Craig David, lunch breaks are a good way to test a company’s flavour, and it’s funny how much they can be a challenge to one’s self-assurance. Just as you would with the food itself, sometimes you have to try something new and push out of your comfort zone to get a taste for it.