My Most Expensive Lunch Suggestions, Ever

I write a lunch column, so I'm pretty sure my midday repasts are all deductable (or at least my accountant seems to think so). But even here in New York, I'm pretty good at keeping it under $10. New York is a city famous for quick and affordable lunches you will almost certainly be eating at your desk — you take the good with the bad — so I thought I'd call out the obvious splurges for a day when one traditionally indulges. Or, you know, cries.


  • Window duck — or Chinese roast duck, if you like — will set you back $40 at a place where it's worth eating.

  • A shooter sandwich contains two large steaks, a ton of bacon and several pounds of mushrooms. So let's start at $30 for the steaks...

  • Making sea urchin spaghetti at the office with my handy hack is a cinch and $15 well-spent to feel that kind of fancy.
  • Ditto making something normal into "truffled something normal." Not with truffle oil, that's stuff's gross. Truffle salt, however, is wonderful.
  • Cold-smoked salmon is expensive. Hot-smoked salmon is almost invariably more expensive.
  • When I can't decide what to order at a sushi place, chirashi don has it all (including the price tag of it all)

  • A nice thick slice of French-style terrine is worth the $15 investment and snobbery you'll encounter at a place that sells nice thick slices of terrine.
  • Anything from the Hipster Food Olympics, provided you don't mind waiting in line, of course.

  • Roe rice is one of my favorite simple, light lunches. $12-15 buys not one but two lunches worth of tasty brain food in the form of fish eggs.
  • Or you could just take yourself out to a three-martini lunch, which begs for a steak.

The important thing is, nobody has to do any more tax paperwork until next year. Or before six months from now, provided you filed your 4868. Or never, I did that for a couple of years. Now, to file away the receipt for truffle salt, cause I'm all out.

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