Now listen. I am not made of money or #invites. Sometimes it is 15 course Michelin star cooking, and sometimes, like now, it is £10 salad I ate like a pig over a trough at the Borough outpost of a London health food chain.
While obviously there’s nothing I love better than putting on a short skirt with long boots and pulling up to a boozy three course meal somewhere with leather booths and low light, that does not constitute most of the “dining out” I actually do, and the same is probably true for you unless you are like, Dua Lipa or something (girl if you’re reading this I beg you post it on your Insta story).
So I think it’s good to acknowledge that as much as dining out does mean luxuriating with your friends over free-flowing drinks and steaming bowls of curry or little plates of crudo or huge, greasy burgers, there are probably more times when it means getting a 6/10 sandwich from Pret (Jambon Beurre for me, Jeff), or having a Greggs on the way home from work because you’ve been thinking about the school dinner-type pizza all day.
All of this is to say that this week, the only dining out I can speak of having done was at atis in Borough, where I paid just over £10 for a chicken Caesar salad, on a rainy Saturday while I was waiting to go to a facial appointment (OK fine I am Dua Lipa).
It often feels wrong and bad to admit that there are some elements of the capitalist city that you kind of like (Uber, GoPuff, the fact that there are Uniqlos everywhere in case you need a Heat-Tech singlet) or at least find convenient, despite their homogenising qualities. For me, the major one is salad bars like atis.
In New York years ago, I first Experienced Sweetgreen – the American salad chain which launched a thousand Taco Bowls and Healthy Caesars; when you go inside it’s kind of like a cross between a McDonald’s and a spa – and ever since I have been in thrall to the allure of a Very Big Salad. I quite enjoy holding a giant bowl to my chest and shoving forkfuls of leaves into my mouth, like a panda or a Kardashian, and for ages, I longed for the option of something similar in London, even though (and if I’m honest, maybe because) it’s a bit soulless.
I have other impulses like this – for example, when I am seeking comfort I often go to massive shopping centres or big supermarkets,* I think because I grew up in Birmingham, and while most people would run in fear at the sight of the Bullring, I went there basically every weekend as a kid and teenager. I think something about both the endless availability and the polished blankness stuck with me – there’s some badly wired pathway in my brain that kind of finds that stuff cosy.
It’s to the point where I crave these spaces now if I am lonely or homesick or sad. Sometimes, especially if I’m feeling a type of way or I’m worn out or the days are getting shorter, I find I want to be over-stimulated in a banal, under-stimulating way. I want to be walking in a mass of people or presented with an enormous choice of products, lined up on a shelf. I want a simple but extremely large, crunchy bowl of vegetables, and I want to eat it in a relatively non-descript space, and afterwards I want to get a Diet Coke and silently brush my hand against some jumpers that I will never buy in And Other Stories, you know? I want like, aggressive normality.
Of course, this all speaks to my current slightly frazzled state, but there is also a practical side to my enjoyment of the slightly boujie, appealing-to-office-workers salad bar, which is that they do feel like they plug a gap. Maybe I don’t have the time or money to necessarily sit down at a restaurant and order a salad; maybe I would like something that feels a bit fresher than a Pret. So places like this – that employ the Subway/Chipotle-style counter production line model, where at the end your server very satisfyingly applies dressing and then tosses your order with tongs in a big metal bowl – are useful things, and I generally really enjoy the lunches I get when I go to them.
The same was true of my visit to atis last weekend. I chose a “Seiza Caesar”, which consists of Romaine, kale and cabbage (though I went for just Romaine because that’s what I felt like), cherry tomatoes, Parmesan, this delicious crunchy breadcrumb type thing, and obviously a boatload of dressing. I also added a “premium extra” of blackened chicken** for the full experience.
It was served to me in a cardboard bowl, and I posted up inside this gleaming white little place, and ate my huge salad with a wooden fork near the window as I watched the rain – people huddling under tiny umbrellas or putting bags on their heads to shelter as if that has ever worked. The dressing was a little bit salty and too liberally applied for me (they ask you if you want it light, medium or heavy; I went medium, which I often do, but on this occasion it felt a bit much, sue me!), but the other ingredients were, genuinely, really well prepared. The lettuce was actually fresh, the tomatoes had proper zing, and the chicken, which was soft and stringy, had been cooked in a coating that made it kind of sweet, balancing out the salt of the dressing.
Is it the best meal I’ve ever eaten? Obviously not – it was a salad mostly bought for convenience. But crucially, it served a purpose. It was exactly what I was after in the moment, both physically and spiritually. My cold from last week still looms a bit, so I wanted crunch and green; I wanted the plainness of the restaurant itself, because I felt too knackered for anything else, and I also wanted the comfort of the food’s familiarity and knowing that I’d like what I got, and that I’d feel reasonably good after I ate it. I got what I came for, paid a tenner for the privilege, and then I left. Sometimes it is just as simple as that.
* Sainsbury’s East Dulwich, Waitrose Stratford City or any decent sized M&S Food Hall would be my specific picks.
** One thing I will say about these places is that their menus are often the most confusing thing in the world; one second you’re like “Oh cool I can add sweet potato and crushed almonds” and the next you’ve racked up a bill of about £30 for one lunch.
I paid for this visit.
Dining Out is written by Lauren O’Neill and illustrated by Lucy Letherland. Weekly reviews are free to read every Thursday, and you can follow us on Instagram here, but if you’d like to see more, you can subscribe for £5 a month or £50 a year, to get extra content every second Sunday.
Click below to see paid and free subscription options, and thanks very much for reading.
So good, Dua!
this is how I feel about Pret’s egg and avo baguettes