lunch hours
 

Someone told me that lunch is not served in London pubs/restaurants after 2PM so we should be sure to eat before then. Is this true? It seems very strange to me. We would be talking about pub type food for lunch, sandwich etc.

It is certainly true for many many pubs I've struck all over the UK, Europe and indeed the world.

We've found it very hard if not impossible to be served lunch in Europe after 2 pm including in London. Is there a problem eating before then? Even in the USA, it's normal to eat lunch before 2 pm. Why would it be strange? Restaurants start preparing for lunch customers around 10-10:30 a.m., assuming the bulk of them will arrive between noon and 1 p.m. By 2 p.m., they are ready to run out of lunch food and begin preparing for dinner customers. Again, I don't understand why it would be strange - what time do you normally eat lunch?

It most certainly is true- but there are lots of chainy places where you can eat lunch in teh afternoon- just not most pubs

It IS a tad strange. Many of us, when travelling, can't keep quite the precise eating hours we might keep the rest of the time, and it does seem perverse that pubs can't do sandwiches after 2pm.

First good news: more and more pubs do offer at least a limited range of food between 2 and 6. There's little obvious logic behind which pubs do (obviously their main target market are office workers, who do keep relatively precise lunch hours, so demand after 2 really does drop off a lot), but those that do usually have an outside sign announcing the fact.

Chinatown hardly ever closes between midday and midnight. Although some places do stop serving dim sum at 3, a la carte (no pun intended) is available all afternoon. Wagamama - the chain restaurant for those of us who normally avoid chain restaurants obsessively - is open all afternoon. So are most of the Lebanese places along Edgware Road, though many Indians do close in the afternoon. Most caffs - both greasy spoons and the Anglo-Italian-style veal cutlet and spag joints - are open 7am-5pm, though they may close earlier in areas (like Smithfield) that keep very early hours. In severe distress, the food courts at railway stations are open all the time. As are all chains. Pret - whose wonderfulness has always eluded me - seems to start running out of food early in the afternoon.

If you keep irregular hours and want to avoid Pizza Express and the like, a universal fallback will be found at the miniaturised branches of the main supermarkets that are springing up all over the place. All three of them (Tesco Sainsbury and Marks+Spencer), as well as the full-size Waitroses in central London, specialise in ready-to-eat, generally culinarily literate, food. One small tip (it may sound obvious, but it tripped me up the other day): they often sell prepackaged ready to eat food that needs a fork. Inevitably, forks are either cunningly hidden in the pack, or available - usually for free - at the checkout.

Unless you insist on eating precisely as you would at home, starvation is the least of your worries in London

Well, it depends on where you're from. I have clients in the midwest that start eating lunch at 11:30 in the morning and dinner at 5:30 in the afternoon. But we rarely get to lunch before 1:30 or 2 pm and never get to dinner before 8 or 8:30 at the earliest. I have not found dinner to be problem in europe - but ending lunch at 2pm (where they do that) is frustrating. Who wants to eat lunch at 1pm when you just had breakfst at 9? (I do not get up at the crack of dawn when on vacation!)

>Who wants to eat lunch at 1pm when you just had breakfst at 9?<

Well, if you do as many Europeans do and have a Continental breakfast, you will be ready for lunch by noon.

A lot of pubs only serve food between 12 and 2 because its not their mainstay income ? the alchohol is! Why fully staff a kitchen and waiting staff to cater to the odd few wishing to eat late, when the majority eat between 12 and 2? Not sure why it?s a big deal - for every pub there must be several other types of eatery which serve all day and just as cheap if not cheaper.

Many pubs in London serve food all afternoon. If you just want a sandwich or a basic dish, you won't have a problem. Lots of chains, including Weatherspoon's pubs, serve meals all day.

Thanks for the information. You gave us several ideas and we'll just have to find the places that do serve. When traveling, we find it hard to stick to a schedule and often are in the middle of visiting someplace and we would like to finish before stopping midway for lunch. Sometimes, as NYtraveler mentioned, it's 8PM before we have dinner so it's nice to have lunch a little later than noon.