We have been meeting for lunch once a month for nearly 15 years. A date gets put in the diary, it might get shuffled around thanks to travel, meetings, illness, but we will then move the lunch out a week or so.
And we are boring with lunch. None of this fancy-schmancy stuff. Nope, we go to Nandos. Or Grill'd, if Nandos isn't in the location we choose to meet - which is normally somewhere in the city. During COVID, we met on zoom, like everybody else did, trying to keep each other sane.
We have very little in common. He's an electronics engineer, married, father of two teenage daughters. And I'm me.
We've seen ourselves through bad bosses, good bosses, cancer (his wife - all good now) recalcitrant kids, mad family members, redundancy, aging parents. You name it.
My workmates know about my monthly lunch with the engineer. They laugh about the fact that we go to Nandos - or Grill'd, or wherever there is cheap brown boy food. But Nandos is our favourite. It's Nandos. I look forward to my occasional lunch there. It's easy. I have a standard order (Classic wrap, hot, with some sweet potato chips, washed down with a Coke Zero.
But meeting up today, we were let down.
The Elizabeth Street Nandos was closed to diners and only offering take awayy.
The day was cold.
"I was looking forward to Nandos," he wailed.
"Me too."
"So where are we going?"
"I dunno, somewhere down Flinders Lane for something cheap and cheerful. "
Which is what we did.
Flinders Lane has hundreds of eateries, which appear to be themed. Up the Paris End, where my office sits, there are higher class places. The Chin Chins, Supernormals, the Cecconis and Cumulus Inc (Must get back there for their tuna tataki on labne with minted peas - genius).
In the streets between Queen and Elizabeth, every second doorway appears to be an Asian eatery.
We found a food court. And a Thai place. And although it wasn't Nandos, it was very yummy.
And we got to talk about all the things we talk about. Work trips, aging parents (his dad is doddery, my folks have just bought a house), recalcitrant daughters and everything else under the sun.
The next lunch date is in the diary already.
Hopefully the Nandos that's in the middle of our offices will be open to diners next time.
We were looking forward to that.
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