BY JEREMY PUGH
B
A
K
LE
C
T
’S
T
E LUNCH K A
!
LEARN TO
LOVE YOUR LUNCH Remember lunch? We used to go to it, look forward to it even, but COVID and the grind have diminished our midday repast, making it the most-skipped meal of the day. What did lunch ever do to deserve that?
I
n the Gilded Age, Diamond Jim Brady’s lunch might start with a couple of dozen oysters, then go on to a brace of lobsters, some deviled crabs and roast beef. And he still had time to become one of the most famous millionaires of his time. One hundred years later, millionaires are a dime a dozen, but lunch is a rarity. Most Americans won’t stop working long enough to eat a real midday meal. The American lunch is shrinking in length, diminishing in importance and nearly bankrupt in imagination. From the luxurious, three-martini events of the ’50s, we devolved to power lunches in the ’80s, to lunch at the keyboard in the ’90s, to a PowerBar and a Zoom meeting in 2023. Even on weekends, it’s rare for us to devote much time to the midday meal. It’s time to take it back.
MAY /J UNE 2023 | SALTLAKEMAGAZINE.COM
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