Long Lunches

How I long for the golden days when offices would empty out at noon and employees would cement business deals over multi-hour, wine-fuelled food orgies that went on till sundown. People were so drunk they put ink to paper while taking shots of malt, and that’s how deals were done.

But the era of three-martini and three-hour lunches have long been off the menu, and traded in for express meals that get you in and out in under 30 minutes. According to a 2006 survey by Diabetes Hong Kong, 69 percent of 1,322 office workers said their lunches lasted 20 minutes or less. That’s barely enough time to chew.

It's been a while since I sat down for a proper long lunch, Christmas Day 2006 in fact. I thought I’d be a hot shot and volunteer to work on Christmas. This was also the day I toyed with the idea of antidepressants. A bunch of traders invited me to dine at the Four Seasons where we feasted from noon until 9.30pm and drank up a bill of $81,000. Luckily the boys who worked the India and Japan markets that day expensed it.

For our holiday table of 14, we had a good crowd who sustained a continuous riff of banter that made nine plus hours fly like nothing. And when we finally ran out of conversation, we happily sat in silence, enjoying each other’s company. It was that good.

Now please don’t confuse what I’m saying with the thinly-veiled Christian cult also known as the Slow Food Movement. People who lunch as a lifestyle are doing it to gain professional advantages or as a big personal fuck you to the mandatory lunch hour, not because they like to chew their food slowly.

Old timers at the FCC blame women executives for killing the long, boozy lunch. They say women in the workforce hold the good old boys accountable for long lunches that lead to bar crawls that lead to pay-by-the-hour hotels charged on entertainment expense accounts. The next assaults were emails, Bloomberg messaging, and Webex making everyone super-efficient and time-starved. Power breakfasts became the ‘it’ meal, limiting meet ups to one hour and taking the boozing aspect out of the equation. Then, as a last blow, their corporate Amexs were put on a diet as corporations trimmed their fat. Good news boys, I’m looking to bring long lunches back!

Well, here’s the thing. My campaign to reignite long lunches in Hong Kong lasted about a week, and it was all talk and no action. My friends decided to take it into their own hands and book me for a Friday. I was happy to be nestling inside Central’s new old boys’ club, Alfie’s by KEE, when it started pouring. The men were working down their second bottle of wine by the time our soups arrived. “We’ll finish this bottle, have a martini, some cheese, then you can go back to work,” they assured me after I tried leaving for the second time.

The longer the lunch went on, the longer I felt guilty for being away from my desk. This isn’t normal I thought. How is it they can enjoy a three-hour lunch, entirely guilt-free and I can’t? I used every excuse in the book to up and leave, but my handbag was held hostage.

“What you need to do is call your office and tell them you have a meeting this afternoon,” said J. “Then you are going to have another drink with us,” said D as he emptied out the remainder of the bottle in my glass. “At five o’clock you tell your office you’ve got to walk around the portfolio, and there is no point of you coming back as you have a client dinner at six-thirty.”

The temptation was there. My club chair already created a nook for my backside. Maybe I’ll just stay for dessert, I told myself. And as the third bottle of wine was brought out I knew I couldn’t enjoy it so there was no point. I stood up, made the announcement that I was going back to work and that I would find them at this very table when I was done. I left my bag behind as collateral.

Guilt won over decadence in this round I thought, as I hailed a taxi. Time is the ultimately luxury and I don’t own my time, not right now, not yet.

Angie Wong