London restaurants where you can have a lavish lunch in just an hour

 Add your view

Fast food: if you call and order a bento box at Cocoon, you'll have plenty of time for a lengthy chat over lunch

Warming: at the Phoenix, you can have three courses served at the same time, with your main kept warm in a Le Creuset pot

No one is able to take long, boozy lunches any more. The days of whiling away an ­afternoon midweek are long gone.

But what's the ­alternative? A soggy sandwich at your desk? Fast food? That's no way to network.

If you want to beat the clock but still have a slap-up meal at lunch, look out for the express lunch deals at London's best restaurants, places that guarantee to have you fed, watered and back at your desk within an hour.

So, knives and forks poised: ready… steady… eat!

Alain Ducasse at The Dorchester

It takes just over two hours on the Eurostar to get to über-chef Alain Ducasse's Paris restaurant for a rather lovely lunch.

For a quicker Ducasse fix, make for Park Lane and his gorgeous establishment at the Dorchester, where his grandly titled “The Lunch Hour” really is the genuine article.

Slammed for its Park Lane prices when it opened a year ago, the restaurant now delivers a three-course gourmet menu including water, coffee and two glasses of wine for £45 per head — all within the hour, if need be.

Flavours are bright and clean with choices including crayfish salad or Scottish salmon with green olive oil emulsion to start, ­followed by braised veal with pommes amandine or fillet of meagre (stone bass) with capers and lemon.

You can finish on a luxuriously sweet note with a warm, melting chocolate fondant or a dark chocolate bar with crispy praline.

Amaya

How many dishes do you reckon you can manage in an hour?

Try nine.

That's the magic number at sophisticated Belgravia Indian, Amaya, where the £25 business lunch, served Monday to Friday, is a ­succession of picture-perfect mini dishes comprising a delicious meal worthy of the restaurant's Michelin star.

Think of it as culinary speed dating: an efficient taster of what's out there. You can always come back for more another time.

The selection, to name but a few, includes minced chicken in lettuce parcels, spinach and fig tikki, grilled mackerel and lamb kebab.

Round it all off with a not-very-Indian Eton mess, a gooey confection of meringue, fruit and luscious cream.

Cocoon

Extracting maximum eating, drinking and gossiping time out of your scant one-hour lunch ain't easy.

Here's how the new “book a bento box” service at Cocoon can help you reclaim your lunch break.

Rather than squander precious minutes on the time-consuming faff of menus and ordering, ­simply call ahead and book and pay for your bento box lunch, specifying your time of arrival. Your lunch will then be served as your bum hits the seat.

Each £15 lunchbox is a three-course affair (including Japanese and veggie options) and comes with copious green or jasmine tea and miso soup.

The chicken yakitori meal has Vietnamese spring rolls to start and a duck and watermelon salad on the side.

The Phoenix

For an all-in-one option that's much more glam than a packed lunch, we love the Plat Rapide at Phoenix, just a short stroll from Victoria station.

Three courses come served together on a platter within 10 minutes of your arrival — that's your starter, main (kept warm in a mini Le Creuset pot) and your pud, so you hardly even need to down tools between courses. Like ­airline food, only better.

There are two set options each day, usually including generous comfort food such as ham hock terrine, followed by shepherd's pie with creamy mash then bread-and-butter pudding. At only £10 a pop, it could quite easily be habit-forming.

Served noon to 3pm only.

Just St James

Could that elusive free lunch be in the offing at swanky eatery Just St James?

So confident is the restaurant that it can deliver three courses from its lunch menu within an hour, it offers your next meal gratis if it fails.

The menu changes weekly, drawing on classic French recipes and fine British ingredients in dishes such as smoked chicken and foie gras terrine, and pork and Madeira with cabbage.

As much as we'd like a free meal, we're glad to know of a top spot for a good business lunch.

Sketch

We love Sketch, particularly for its promise to serve us three courses “swiftly and elegantly”.

Lunch here is always an occasion, even if you are just having a quickie. The Gourmet Rapide menu at £35 — including coffee and petits fours — is a tantalising snapshot of chef Pierre Gagnaire's intriguing and inventive cuisine.

The menu always reads thrillingly so it's a good job you get a bit of everything for course number one, including lamb ­shoulder “Santorini” with grilled aubergine, caprese salad, black olive ice cream with filo pastry and a rosé wine and red poppy jelly with tofu.

Mains are similarly diverse: duck fillet in cranberry juice with sauerkraut, or mushroom tortellini and gnocchi tapenade. You'll be in and out within an hour.

 

What's on today   What's on tomorrow

Receive our newsletter