Lunch. It's such a small word, and yet such a significant one. If, for instance, a man suggests lunch, then he is probably not about to fall head-over-heels in love with you (only dinner will do). If, on the other hand, a film producer or a literary agent or a big shot City headhunter suggests lunch, a whole drawerful of exciting possibilities slides open in your mind. Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes lies lunch with a friend. On balance, this is the very best kind of lunch: gentle but gossipy, an oasis of solidarity snatched in the middle of a fraught day.
Theoretically, of course, lunch is supposed to have 'died' some time back in the early Nineties, when Britain plunged into recession. Visit any smart London restaurant at one o'clock in the afternoon, however, and you will see that this is far from being the case. The room will be full, and the vast majority of diners will be female: sassy-looking creatures in kitten heels and dark suits. They arrive, and plant delicate kisses on one another's lightly maquillaged cheeks; they order Caesar salad followed by steamed sea bass; they chat, animatedly; then, at about a quarter to three, they leave, trailing a cloud of Fracas in their wake.
The question is: who are these women, and what are they doing? Are they conducting business or pleasure? Have they no fear that the housing market is about to crash, and their shares may halve in value? In order to find out, I decided to bag an invitation to just such a lunch - which is how I come to find myself sitting in the elegant but minimalist confines of Nobu with Eloise Napier, social editor of Harpers & Queen; Ellen Spann, the glammy director of public relations at Claridge's; Iona Jepson, actress and caterer; and Countess Alexander of Tunis, a former lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret who now runs her own events company.
While we drink fizzy water and eat pretty rolls of sushi, they tell me about the modern ladies who lunch. 'I think you'll find that most of the women you see in a restaurant like this are doing business,' says Spann, who is American and lunches at least three times a week, usually in one of the restaurants owned by Claridge's. 'So, yes, they are on expense accounts.' How productive does she think lunches are? 'Oh, VERY productive. Speaking on the phone is fine, but it's so much nicer to meet over lunch. You can ask about people's families. I think that's why you see so many women doing business lunches these days. Men tend to bond over a drink, and the drinking culture is really a thing of the past, whereas women bond over confidences.'
Spann makes a reservation every single day, even if she does not always take it up. 'If someone cancels, well, that's like a gift,' she says. 'I get an hour on my own to shop, or to read the newspaper. But most days, yes, I am busy lunching.' What I want to know is: how come her waist stays so tiny? She laughs. 'Well, you do tend to stick to things that are quite light. I would avoid eating somewhere where the food is very rich.' Does she drink? 'Definitely not. If I do, the afternoon is a complete write-off, and I have a LOT of work to get through, so that's not really an option.'
The others around the table echo her thoughts. 'Lunch is important,' says Eloise, who does a couple a week and, today, is resplendent in to-steal-for Missoni. 'I take contacts out so they can tell me what parties and events are coming up, but I also take people out as a thank you.' Davina Alexander, who frequents 'all the usual places - the Ivy, the Square', agrees: 'There really are times when only lunch will do. It's so much more relaxed and intimate than speaking on the telephone - and, if there is a lull in the conversation, there are plenty of distractions: the menu, the food...'
Time, however, is of the essence. Davina, who organises weddings and parties for the rich and famous, is careful only to travel into town for lunch if it fits in with the rest of her day. 'I work in Battersea, so if I've meetings there in the morning and the afternoon, lunch can be tricky.' All of the women, moreover, insist that they limit their lunches to a maximum of two hours. 'There are so many other things to be done,' says Iona. 'You can't just sit there gossiping. People's lives are so busy.'
Lunch has been in and out of fashion almost as often as the mini-skirt. 'In the Sixties, you basically had two choices,' says the restaurant critic AA Gill, who prefers to go without lunch himself, hunger being a greater spur to work than a three-course blow-out. 'It was either egg and chips at a local cafe, or the set menu at a smart hotel, where your starter was a glass of grapefruit juice. In the Seventies, wholefood came in. Lunch felt like a medieval penance. It wasn't until the Eighties, when there was more French dressing in people's hair than on their salad leaves and it was obligatory to say the words 'a million' at least once during any conversation, that it had its heyday.'
Suddenly, portions were elaborately tiny; bills as long as supermarket receipts; and good tables - the 'right' tables - fiendishly hard to come by. The most brilliant depictions of the lunch habits of this period can be found in novels: American Psycho and The Bonfire of the Vanities. Remember Wolfe's virtuoso description of the food at La Boue d'Argent? 'Fallow had ordered a vegetable paté. The paté was a small pinkish semicircle with stalks of rhubarb arranged around it like rays. It was perched in the upper left-hand quadrant of a large plate. The plate seemed to be glazed with an Art Nouveau painting of a Spanish galleon on a reddish sea sailing toward the... sunset... but the setting sun was, in fact, the paté, with its rhubarb rays, and the Spanish ship was not done in glaze at all but in different colours of sauce. It was a painting in sauce.'
In New York and London, this was the era of the Ladies Who Lunch (mark one), a scary brigade who wore Chanel and were as thin as Burmese cats. At their helm, steering their way across the pale carpets of all the best dining rooms, were Nan Kempner, social X-ray extraordinaire, and Princess Diana. In London, Diana frequented Ménage à Trois, Antony Worrall Thompson's first restaurant, which served only starters and puddings. 'It was specifically designed for women,' he says. 'I'd taken a few out, and noticed that they always ordered two starters.' Between 1981 and 1988, Worrall Thompson opened branches of Ménage in New York, Washington, Bombay and Melbourne. 'The Princess of Wales coming in certainly didn't harm things on the publicity front.'
By the early Nineties, lunch was on its way out. Negative equity was all the rage and, although Terence Conran was busy opening his vast aerodrome-style restaurants, these were places for dinner. Anyone who did escape the confines of their desk in the middle of the day used the time for business rather than as a break. Out went the champagne and in came the Badoit; out went the 4.30 finishes and in came a surreptitious glancing at watches. AA Gill's theory is that the world of lunch is now riven firmly in two. In one camp are those for whom lunch is something from Pret a Manger and a copy of Heat magazine. In the other are the kind of women I met at Nobu: PRs, magazine editors and those with charity lunches to organise. Worrall Thompson, however, thinks the institution of lunch will never really disappear - come war or recession or fast food. 'Remember this,' he says. 'However much takeaway sushi gets sold, there's always SOMEONE who needs to impress someone else.'
Excuse me where's the ladies
Manhattan's media pack
High profile lunchers:
Tina Brown, Anna Wintour, Candace Bushnell, creator of Sex and the City, New York's It girl twins Plum and Lucy Sykes.
Where:
Michael's on West 55th Street, La Goulue, 746 Madison Avenue, Da Silvano, 260 Sixth Avenue, The Four Seasons, East 57th Street.
How to spot them:
Sculpted black bobs or Meg Ryan-style blonde shags for the veteran brigade, poker straight long hair for the younger crowd, dark sunglasses, Manolo Blahnik heels.
What they eat:
High-protein, low-carb, anything that will maintain optimal thinness. They each strive for the ultimate nutritional power statement, the signature lunch, as pioneered by US Vogue's Anna Wintour, who famously only ever consumes extraordinarily rare meat. Her favourite dish at Da Silvano is Paillard D'agnello (flash-fried lamb) which she orders 'black and blue', meaning, pretty much raw. The occasional glass of champagne, though nothing that threatens to dull their edge.
What they talk about:
Themselves; bidding wars and book deals (Plum Sykes commanded $600,000 on the strength of one chapter); media gossip.
London's immigrant Park Avenue Princesses population
High profile lunchers:
Pia Getty and her sister, Marie-Chantal Miller, writer Brooke de Ocampo (author of Bright Young Things, Manhattan and London), jewellery designer Catherine Prevost.
Where:
Le Caprice, Daphne's...the PAPs have commandeered the trad stomping grounds of the original ladies who lunched, and claimed them for themselves. If they're in a hurry they grab a Bento box of sushi from Nobu.
How to spot them:
Hair (blonde) tied back into a neat pony tail which their owners are in the habit of swishing about violently in moments of stress, white shirts with pearls, Hermès handbags.
What they eat:
Absolutely not the point. PAPs pick, play and nibble rather than eat. Caesar salad and still mineral water (PAPs do not drink) is their regular order.
What they talk about:
Plans for their next baby shower event; spa treatments; Botox; the benefits of a personal yoga teacher.
Charity Girls
High profile lunchers:
Lady Helen Taylor, ex-models Saffron Aldridge and Laura Bailey, Allegra Hicks, Brooke de Ocampo (again), political hostess Carla Powell (wife of Charles) and Jessica De Rothschild.
Where:
The Sanderson hotel off London's Oxford Street, where the best charity events are held.
How to spot them:
Something beige, tailored and sensible from Armani, Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein.
What they eat:
Bite-sized sandwiches. Very small cakes. Miniscule chocolates. Tea. Charity lunches are civilised affairs; such occasions are not the time for gastronomic excess, drunkenness, or...eating.
What they talk about:
How to charm their charity's corporate sponsors; children (their own, their friends', assorted anonymous sick children), schools, the unfeasible length of school holidays.
Yummy Mummies
High profile lunchers:
Kate Moss and Lila, Sharleen Spiteri and Misty Kyd. Liz Hurley and Damian if you're very, very lucky.
Where:
Lemonia, in London's Primrose Hill, the Ivy, Julie's Wine Bar, Notting Hill (has a particularly useful crèche on Sundays), any Starbucks with big sofas (also a favourite with the nannies).
How to spot them:
Just-got-out-of-bed hair, which nonetheless still looks absurdly glamorous, combat trousers by Maharishi, jeans and trainers, miniscule vest tops customised to expose acres of indecently rapidly re-toned flesh. Chipped, devil-may-care nail varnish.
What they eat:
Organic, wholegrain and hearty. Their lunches are lengthy affairs interrupted by nappy changes and mobile phone calls, and unlike virtually all other ladies who lunch, the hip mummies consider alcohol to be an entirely integral part of the lunching action. Pinot Grigio, generally.
What they talk about:
The merits of Nappy Express, the home delivery company that will bring organic baby food to your door. The best post-natal personal trainers.
