The History of the Power Lunch

I love "power lunches". I have to admit they come rarely, but they're a rare midday indulgence in a world that demands a constant work schedule and a chew-and-swallow-while-typing lunch is certainly a part of that. But once in a while, I get the chance to relax and indulge on something delicious while sitting back, relaxing, and talking business with colleagues, clients and suppliers. Wonder where the history of these power lunches came from. Wonder no more as The Paris Review tells in amazing detail:

The earliest power lunches likely took place in the 1830s at Delmonico’s, whose culinary wizardry (Lobster Newburg, Baked Alaska) and prime location in the financial district made it popular with well-heeled suits. Apart from the occasional visit from such authors as Charles Dickens or Mark Twain, Delmonico’s remained largely populated by business and finance moguls. Other powerful groups gathered at different locales over the years: playwrights and actors descended upon Sardi’s in the theater district in the forties, while wealthy socialites clustered at Le Cirque, Le Pavillion, and La Grenouille in the fifties and sixties, earning the not-entirely-flattering nickname “ladies who lunched.” 

For literary types, the lunch venue of choice was the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street. What would later come to be known as the Algonquin Round Table (or, as its members preferred, “The Vicious Circle,”) began in June of 1919, when Vanity Fair writers Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Robert E. Sherwood joined like-minded pals for a midday soiree to welcome back famously sharp-penned New York Times drama critic Alexander Wollcott from a stint as a World War I correspondent overseas. Theater agent John Peter Toohey had organized the lunch as a practical joke, ostensibly as a welcome home, but instead used the opportunity to roast Wollcott for failing to include one of his clients in a column. Legend has it that all attendees—Wollcott included—enjoyed the gathering so much they decided to do it again the next day, and the next, and the one after that. 

Dining upon free popovers and celery sticks, or, in flush times, chicken hash with pancakes, the aforementioned writers—along with an ever-evolving cast that included playwrights George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly, columnist Heywood Broun, and author Edna Ferber—bantered and gossiped, played endless games of cribbage and poker, and devised elaborate practical jokes to deceive one another. Conversation was fast, clever and biting—hence the “vicious” nickname, though the Round Table moniker was widely used after a Brooklyn Eagle caricature depicted the group draped in armor around a circular table. (Not all were fans of the club: Groucho Marx, whose brother Harpo occasionally joined the group, distanced himself from the table, claiming “the price of admission is a serpent’s tongue and a half-concealed stiletto.”)

Awesome. Just awesome