5 days ago
Pret is for arrivistes, Greggs is for the everyman: What your high-street work lunch says about you
Which queue will you join on your lunch break this week? If you work anywhere near Baker Street in London then you have two choices: line up at Greggs in Marylebone Station and order a sausage roll for the princely sum of £1.45, or walk down the road and part with £29 at Madame Tussauds to view a waxwork replica of the midday staple that the museum's studio manager, Jo Kinsey, says 'is synonymous with British culture'.
The Greggs sausage roll is no longer a tubular eccentricity that only makes sense to Britons; the pastry's debut at Madame Tussauds (from June 5 for a limited period) suggests that it is as much a part of our global reputation as William Shakespeare, David Attenborough and, aptly, a predilection for queuing.
Would a Pret baguette ever be given the same platform? Those of us who eat one every weekday might argue it should. For most British high streets now resemble pedestrianised carb crawls, with hungry office workers forced to prowl pavements lined with Gail's, Subways, Prets and Costas, with nothing but a vape shop and a bookies to break the chain.
It was Brillat-Savarin who once said, 'tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are' – and what we pluck from the chiller cabinet or gesture at through the sneeze guard is undoubtedly part of our identity.
So, what does your work lunch say about you…?
Gail's chicken, tarragon and ham seasonal hand pie
Dirty food for clean people
The Gail's customer is not just clutching their purse or messenger bag when they stroll into store; they're carrying so much more baggage besides. This inner baggage contains a compartment of 'things I can't say I like out loud', including Bond films, cheap prosecco, Jack Vettriano paintings and Love Island.
The Gail's customer yearns for starch, carbs and a sugary coffee the size of a funeral urn, but the PR agency they work for doesn't look kindly upon hot-desking with a McDonald's bag. Gail's, however, is dirty food for clean people: the epicurean equivalent of dressing Stella McCartney in Dot Cotton's laundrette attire.
The chicken, tarragon and ham 'hand' pie (whose hand? Have they removed the fingernails before mincing it?) looks like something the Spanish would use as a wheel clamp. And the Gail's eater knows it. They know they're being untrue to themselves. They don't really want to work in the comms industry. They don't really want to spend three quarters of their salary on shoes. And they certainly don't want this 'seasonal' pie – a poltroon's pastry for people too self-conscious to embrace the golden arches and a fistful of McNuggets.
Pret a Manger crayfish and rocket sandwich
For those who dream of Boden catalogues and National Trust membership
The middle-class arriviste of sandwiches. 'Look at me,' the eater wants to cry before removing the packaging, 'I'm the kind of person who knows first-hand what posh seafood is all about. I'm more than au fait with the real crayfish thing from my holiday in Cape Town last year.'
Crayfish and rocket are grudging bedfellows. Yet, like the Gallagher brothers, they insist on joining forces for the benefit of nobody. The rocket tastes of boiled wet wipes and the crayfish like a rubber band that's been left in a storm drain.
But you will insist on eating this sarnie, chewing frantically, in order to stay fuelled until evening. After which, you'll dream about the Boden's catalogue, National Trust membership renewal and online stamp duty calculators.
Leon herby falafel wrap
Boring in a way that only someone with a Media Studies degree and a Pashley can be boring
The Leon eater knows that taking lunch here isn't just about sustenance, it's a manifesto for their ordered lives. A life awash with copies of Monocle magazine, obscure independent tour operator holidays to Suriname, and music tastes which exclude anything that has had more than 200 listens worldwide on Spotify.
The question is why the Leon eater, axiomatically opposed to chain stores of any kind, is here when there's that hip-looking Szechuan place across the street? They may extol the virtues of cuisines found in the lesser visited parts of the world to their friends ('of course the fare in Peshawar is infinitely superior to what you find outside of the North West Frontier…') but they're infinitely more comfortable with the pseudo-international buffet grub that Leon excels at.
Which brings us to the falafel itself: the taste closer to Bromley than Beirut, with timid tahini, humdrum hummus and herbs that the Lebanese would clump together and use as draught excluder. Boring in a way that only someone with a Media Studies degree and a Pashley can be boring. And that's dull indeed.
Costa Wiltshire ham & mature cheddar toastie
You call a spade a flaming shovel, don't you? No, you probably just call it a massive tool with a concomitant cheeky wink. The Costa toastie consumer knows what they like and they haven't got time for neologisms such as 'panini', 'woke' and 'Rachel Reeves'.
Never mind that the ham and cheese toastie tastes like hot glue mixed with essence of beach towel. Here stands a lunchtime snacker who knows their own mind. Jeremy Clarkson is God, the congestion charge is disgusting and nothing on telly will ever be funnier than Only Fools and Horses. Who could argue with that?
Itsu super salmon light
The Itsu customer will absolutely, always, be typing furiously on their phones while they queue
The British Itsu eater has missed the point of sushi and sashimi. In Japan, it's a daily pleasure, a testament to the staggering freshness of the fish. Here, sushi has been reduced to something medicinal; a dish we pretend to adore but actually consider to be the gastro equivalent of buying a tub of multi-vitamins from the Superdrug across the street.
The Itsu customer shuffles to the counter with their super salmon light – a tray containing salmon that actually tastes pleasantly silken rather than of a dyed-pink slug – worrying about things too much: the ageing process, the situation in Chad, prospective schedule changes on Radio Four. And they will, absolutely always, be typing furiously on their phones while they queue.
The conversation is not making them happier. Perhaps because they think that badinage is something that you put on a paper cut. Or perhaps it's the continued smothering of their desires with sachets of wasabi. The Itsu eater would secretly like a holiday in the Maldives. But, for the fourth year running, they're in abeyance to their partner's caravan lease near Lake Windermere and its compost loo. Bring on the violins. And, for God's sake, more wasabi.
Subway meatball sandwich
It's the weight of an obese guinea pig and tastes only slightly better
Last night was a rough one, wasn't it? How did 'a quick one after work' turn into 2am in a DJ bar necking Jägerbombs like it's 2003 all over again?
You're too old for all this now, and your lungs and liver are telling you so. But your office nickname of 'one man party machine' (and you will be a man) must be maintained. You need a lunch so big it can be seen from space.
The Subway meatball sandwich is the weight of an obese guinea pig and tastes only slightly better. Yet eating one of these delivers the recipe for success: an afternoon asleep on the sofa in the conference room and another night out with the boys. 'Did someone say 'indoor crazy golf'...?'
Greggs sausage roll
Tastes like something your Gran would have baked with love, if not any great degree of skill
Whether dressed for an evening at the Barbican or an afternoon on a building site, the consumer of a Greggs sausage roll is the chameleon of the high-street lunch scene. They eat it ironically. They eat it lustfully. They eat it while running for a bus.
The Greggs sausage roll eater is you and me and everyone in between. The only differential is how guilty we feel about eating one. Do we feel we've plummeted several social classes, or are we more concerned about the fact that we've double-parked the Transit while picking up this cylinder of baked pleasure?
Sure, the sausage meat looks like Tony Hart could have used it to create Morph, and the pastry has a relationship with real butter that's as close as we are to Mao Zedong's mausoleum. But the sausage roll eater couldn't care less.
Wrapped in its humble little paper bag, the item is almost votive. It tastes like something your Gran would have baked with love, if not any great degree of skill. Nobody has ever returned to the office after a Greggs sausage roll feeling worse than they did an hour previously. Truly, this is porky benediction.
