Six business lunches worth leaving your desk for
Six set menus built for the working day, from £17 to a Michelin star
The business lunch never really went away, it just got faster. What survived the years of sad desk salads is a very specific format: a fixed price, a tight window in the middle of the day, and a kitchen that understands you have somewhere to be at two. Some of London's best rooms now compete hard for that hour, and a few are honest enough to put the word business on the menu itself.
Here are six that do it properly, sitting exactly where the offices are: the City, Smithfield, Farringdon, Borough, Paddington and the arcade under Bloomberg's headquarters. They run from a £17 plate of handmade pasta to a Michelin star that promises to have you out inside the hour. Every price, day and window below was checked against the venue's own published menus this past week.
01 · Cooper's Cut
Tower Bridge
The Power Lunch: two courses £45 or three £52, Monday to Saturday, 12pm to 2pm.
The newest room on this list and the one that takes the brief most literally. Cooper's Cut is the steakhouse inside the Four Seasons at Ten Trinity Square, two minutes from Fenchurch Street and Tower Hill, and its set lunch is called the Power Lunch with a straight face. Two courses are £45, three are £52, and there are optional martini pairings for meetings that are going well. The menu is proper steakhouse territory built for speed: Belted Galloway steak tartare with smoked scallop or sea bream crudo to start, then a Hereford minute steak frites, the house wagyu burger with sweet potato fries, or a 220g Angus sirloin. A Granny Smith apple tarte Tatin or a bitter chocolate tart with Guinness ice cream closes it out. It runs Monday to Saturday, 12pm to 2pm, which is exactly the window it sounds like.
02 · Restaurant St Barts
Smithfield
The Business Lunch Hour: three courses £60, Monday to Friday, 12pm to 2.15pm.
The most expensive lunch here and comfortably the fastest fine dining in London. Restaurant St Barts holds a Michelin star for its evening tasting menu, which runs to £170 and several hours. The Business Lunch Hour is the same kitchen compressed: three courses for £60, built to get you in and out inside sixty minutes, Monday to Friday with bookings from 12pm to 2.15pm. It opens with bread and butter and a cheese and onion starter, then a choice of four mains and two desserts, all in a calm, blond-wood room a few minutes from Barbican and Farringdon. As a ratio of cooking quality to time spent, there may be nothing else like it in the city.
03 · Roast
Borough Market
The Summer Business Lunch: two courses £29, Monday to Friday, 11.45am to 4.45pm.
Roast sits up in the Floral Hall above Borough Market, all glass and iron with the market roofs below, three minutes from London Bridge. Its standing Market Menu is £35 for two courses, but this summer there is a second, sharper deal: the Summer Business Lunch, two courses for £29, weekdays only, served on a generous 11.45am to 4.45pm window that forgives a meeting overrunning. The menu is short and seasonal: a courgette and pea tart or Cornish scallops crudo to start, then crispy aubergine with red pepper sauce and toasted almonds, a Borough salad, or pan-seared Cornish sea bass with white beans and coastal herbs. It is branded a summer menu, so catch it while the word still applies.
04 · Quality Chop House
Farringdon
The set lunch: three courses £29, Tuesday to Friday, 12pm to 2.30pm.
The oldest idea on this list and possibly the purest. Quality Chop House has been feeding Farringdon from its Grade II listed dining room since 1869, and its weekday set lunch removes the one thing a working lunch does not have time for: decisions. Three courses, £29, one single menu that changes every fortnight. You sit down in the famous narrow oak booths and lunch simply happens to you. The current fortnight is a sweetcorn and maple soup, a Schnitzel Holstein and a peach Melba, but the point is the format rather than any one line-up. It runs Tuesday to Friday, 12pm to 2.30pm, and the wine list by the glass is chalked on a board if the afternoon is a write-off anyway.
05 · Ayllu
Paddington
The Business Set Menu: five Nikkei courses for £29, Monday to Friday, 12pm to 6pm.
The best course-count on the list by a distance. Ayllu is the dark, plush Japanese-Peruvian room at Paddington Central, two minutes from the station, and its weekday deal is called the Business Set Menu: five courses for £29, running all the way from noon to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Five courses sounds slow for a lunch hour but Nikkei cooking moves quickly: salted edamame, a choice of roll, a ceviche, a skewer and a main, paced more like good sushi than a white-tablecloth marathon. The same kitchen's tasting menus run to £45 and £59 in the evening, which makes the lunch arithmetic easy to defend to whoever signs it off.
06 · Lina Stores Bloomberg Arcade
City of London
The Lunch Set Menu: two courses £17 or three £20, Monday to Friday, 12pm to 5pm.
The value pick, and geographically the most on-theme lunch in London: Lina Stores' City outpost sits in Bloomberg Arcade, the row of restaurants built into the ground floor of Bloomberg's European headquarters behind Bank. The Lunch Set Menu is two courses for £17 or three for £20, Monday to Friday, 12pm to 5pm. Two courses means an antipasto and a plate of the handmade pasta the Soho original built its name on, or pasta and a dolce if the day calls for it; three courses takes one of each. At £17 it is barely more than the average City meal deal ambition, except it arrives on mint-green plates and involves fresh mafaldine.
All six are on All Set with the full menus, serving windows and a direct booking link on each. Set menus only, never tasting menus, and never a stale price.