Two people walk in at half past twelve
One has forty minutes and a phone that will not stop. The other has an afternoon and somebody to catch up with.
A lunch menu has to serve both, and most of them quietly pick a side. Ours tries not to.
The forty minute version
Sandwiches and wraps are the fast lane. Caprese, Mozza and Pesto, Parma and Mozza, Piccante, Turkey and Swiss. The Lobster Roll if the day deserves it. Chicken Bacon Ranch, American Classic and Chicken Caesar in wrap form.
Add a salad and you are done: Arugula, Mediterranean, Caesar, or Burrata and Tomatoes.
None of that needs a decision longer than the walk to the table, and none of it arrives so late that you are checking the time.
The two hour version
Same menu, read differently.
Start with a Mezze Platter or Chips and Guac. Move to the toasts, which are the most shareable thing we make. Get a pizza for the table, Roman-style, cut into slabs, and let it sit in the middle while people take pieces of it between sentences.
Meatballs, Mac and Cheese, Tuna Tostada, the sliders. Order in waves rather than courses. Nobody will bring you a check you did not ask for.
Why one menu and not two
Because you do not always know which lunch you are having when you sit down.
Plenty of forty minute lunches turn into ninety minute lunches because the person opposite had news. Plenty of leisurely ones get cut short by a phone call. A menu split into "quick bites" and "long lunch" makes you commit to one of those at the start, and it is the wrong moment to ask.
Lunch runs from eleven until five, when dinner takes over. Happy hour starts at four, which means the last hour of lunch and the first hour of happy hour are the same hour, and that is not an accident either.
