The Lost Art of the Lunch Break

At Le Maraîcher, we love good food – but we love what happens around the table even more. So this is a small invitation to rediscover something we’ve all quietly let slip: the lunch break.

When was the last time you really stopped at midday?

Not “answering emails with one hand and eating with the other”. Not “15 minutes between two meetings, standing somewhere near a coffee machine”. A real pause. The kind where you sit down, breathe out, and let your shoulders drop for the first time since morning.

Your brain just needs you to step away from the screen long enough to reset, where nothing is asked from you except to sit, chew, taste, maybe talk a little. When you do that, your heartbeat slows down, your breathing calms, and suddenly the ideas you were pushing so hard for appear on their own.

And then there is the magic of not eating alone.

Something happens when people share a table. The conversation moves away from deadlines and slides into real life: a child who didn’t want to put on their shoes, a trip someone is dreaming about, a ridiculous story from years ago, a surprisingly serious opinion about tiramisu. Colleagues stop being “the person from Finance” or “the person from IT” and become… people.

The good news is: you don’t need more time. You just need different rituals.

Maybe it’s deciding that, once you have your tray, the laptop stays closed. Maybe it’s choosing a table that isn’t your desk – a new corner, a spot by a window, a place where your brain understands: “Here, we’re off duty.” Maybe it’s simply looking at your plate, tasting your food and letting your phone stay face down for twenty minutes. Maybe it’s turning to the person next to you and saying: “Lunch together?” even if you’ve only ever talked about work before.

In a culture where “busy” is worn like a gold medal, taking a real lunch break is almost an act of rebellion. A quiet one, with a fork and a glass of water. But still a rebellion.