In Los Angeles, going out to lunch is an option, and one rarely taken by some of the most successful people in town. Our attitude toward lunch proves that, despite the general condescension that the East Coast feels towards LA, we're actually the hardest working city in the nation. Let me tell you a story:
Some years ago, I spent several months working for People Magazine in New York City. Before I started, I called one of the phalanx of editors who work there, and asked what time I should show up. He told me nine would be fine. I was there at a quarter of nine. He showed up at 11 – and he was one of the first people to arrive in the office. What I observed over the next few weeks was a world that was built not just around late starts, but also around seemingly end`less lunches. As a rule, editors and writers showed up late in the morning, and spent what little time remained in the AM to set up a lunch date, which they usually left for a little after noon. They often returned somewhere around four. I speak from experience, for I was asked along on enough long lunches to grow my waistline from size 34 to size 36 in less than a month.
I don’t mean to say that no one in LA goes out for lunch: The Ivy, The Grill, Pacific Dining Car are all busy with suits eating and, yes, drinking their lunch. But this is also a city where a remarkable number of Type As eat lunch at their desk. Not just occasionally, but day after day after day. Take me for instance. In the past year, I've left my office fewer than a dozen times for lunch. This is odd – it's my job to go to restaurants. And yet, in the middle of the day, I simply don't have the time. These days, it takes half an hour (if you're lucky) to get anywhere. It takes a minimum of an hour for lunch (unless you're eating at McDonald's). It takes half an hour again (ditto on lucky) to get back. The bottom line is two hours gone during the most productive segment of the day, possibly three – it's a lot easier for me to make a sandwich and eat it at my desk.
Even restaurateurs don't have time to eat lunch at restaurants. Richard Drapkin, co-owner of The Brentwood, Grace and bld, says, "The best case scenario, eating in the neighborhood, still makes it an hour out of your day. I like to order in – it takes a few minutes to order, you can work while the food shows up, you can work while you eat. When you have a packed day, an hour is a lot of time to give up. It can make the difference between getting your job done or not."
The trend toward eating at your desk has, not surprisingly, created a cottage industry of purveyors who specialize in feeding workers quickly and efficiently, including several high-end restaurateurs who see a bull market in lunches-to-go. They include Bob Spivak, founder of The Grill, who opened Take a Bao last year in the Century City Marketplace – a fast-food concept that cranks out an assortment of exotically filled buns in moments. And in nearby Culver City, Kazuto Matsusaka and his wife, Vicki Fan (Beacon), dish out desktop lunches at The Point, which the Survey refers to as a "stainless steel lunch stand stationed in [an] office park," and where the lunch dishes are a reflection of their well-respected style of Pan-Asian fusion cooking. In LA, we may be eating at our desks – but that doesn't mean we're living on liverwurst-on-white.
– Merrill Shindler