Why lunch gets overlooked
Dinner is the booking most guests think of first, and it is easy to see why: evening light, a proper reservation, the sense of an occasion. A long lunch rarely gets the same consideration, which is a genuine shame, because the middle of a weekday afternoon holds something dinner almost never can, an entire stretch of open time on either side of it. Nobody is rushing to make a curtain, nobody has an early flight the next morning, and a two o'clock table can run until four thirty without a single waiter suggesting otherwise.
For a guest with a free afternoon, whether visiting London or simply between meetings on a quieter day, a long lunch is one of the least appreciated ways to spend real time with a companion, unhurried by anything the evening usually brings with it.
What makes a lunch 'long'
A long lunch is really just an ordinary lunch given permission to run. It starts around two, once the earlier lunchtime crowd has cleared out and a restaurant has settled into a quieter rhythm, and it stops whenever the conversation stops wanting more, rather than when the kitchen wants the table back. A good long lunch restaurant tends to have this built into its culture already, no set second sitting, tables that stay yours until you choose to leave, staff unbothered by a two hour gap opening up between courses.
The result, done well, feels closer to an afternoon spent together than a meal that happens to be eaten at lunchtime, which is precisely the point of booking it this way rather than in the evening.
Where the light is best in the afternoon
Restaurants with real daylight tend to suit a long lunch far better than rooms built for candlelit evenings. Chelsea's King's Road holds several bright, high ceilinged dining rooms that make far more sense at two in the afternoon than at eight in the evening, when their generous windows would otherwise simply reflect the street lamps back at you. South Kensington, close to the museums, keeps a similar collection of light filled cafes and restaurants that were clearly designed with an afternoon rather than a night in mind.
Choosing a room with proper windows, rather than one built around low lighting, is worth thinking about specifically for this kind of booking, since the whole appeal of a long lunch is the daylight it happens inside.
A walk built into the plan
The best long lunches often end with a walk rather than a taxi. A table in Kensington or South Kensington sits within easy reach of Kensington Gardens, whose paths along the Serpentine and past the Italian Gardens are exactly the sort of unhurried afternoon walk that a good lunch deserves afterwards, coffee in hand, conversation still running from the table.
Building the walk in from the start, rather than deciding on it afterwards, changes the whole shape of the booking. A two hour lunch followed by an hour's stroll through the park adds up to a full, satisfying afternoon together that never once required an evening dress or a dinner reservation weeks in advance.
What to order for an afternoon that has nowhere to be
A long lunch rewards a slightly different order than an evening dinner would. A lighter main course, or two smaller plates shared between you, tends to suit an afternoon better than a heavy three course meal that leaves you wanting nothing more than a nap by four o'clock. A bottle shared slowly over two hours, rather than a fast paced round of cocktails, matches the pace of the whole afternoon far more comfortably.
Coffee at the end, taken slowly rather than as a quick full stop to the meal, is often the best signal that the lunch has genuinely become an afternoon rather than merely a long meal. It is worth resisting the urge to check a watch once dessert arrives; the whole appeal of this kind of booking is that there is, quite deliberately, nowhere else either of you needs to be.
Companions who love a daylight date
Cindy, who sails and practises yoga most mornings and rarely goes anywhere without a camera, treats a long lunch and the walk afterwards as one of her favourite kinds of afternoon, genuinely happier in daylight than under any restaurant's evening lighting. Thea, who lives for a sunny outdoor afternoon and carries that same easy warmth into a lunch table, is an equally natural match for exactly this kind of unhurried, daylight booking.
Both women, and a good number of the site's other companions, find a long lunch a genuinely different pleasure from an evening booking rather than simply a shorter version of one.
Booking the afternoon
A long lunch runs on precisely the same fare ladder as an evening dinner date; the two hour booking at £750 or the three hour booking at £1,050 both suit a lunch that wants a walk built onto the end of it. Simply tell the desk you would like a daytime rather than an evening booking, name the restaurant if you already have one, and the process from there is identical.
The full fare ladder for every length of evening, lunch included, sits on the rates page, and the same 25 percent deposit secures a standard afternoon exactly as it would an evening at eight o'clock.
Quick answers
No, the fare depends on length rather than the time of day. Two hours at lunchtime costs the same as two hours in the evening.
Very easily, and it is one of the most popular versions of this booking. Simply choose a length that covers the whole plan, table and walk together.
Both work well. Midweek restaurants tend to be quieter and more relaxed, while a weekend lunch has the whole afternoon of a day off to run into.