We'll admit this one is a bit of a treat: bento boxes from Sosharu, Jason Atherton's izakaya-style Japanese restaurant in Clerkenwell. A bento box is a traditional Japanese meal made out of several boxes that stack together, with the compartments containing rice, fish or meat, with pickled or cooked veg. Sosharu's have a distinctly high-end feel, and you can choose between chicken (fiery karaage chicken with udon noodles, seasonal salad and pickles, followed by ice cream or sorbet), seafood (with salmon teriyaki) and vegetarian (broccoli tempura), each of which has the added option of being washed down with a glass of sake. It's the kind of lunch that'll make your working day a whole lot better.
When it comes to the working lunch, Mumbai has it down pat: everyday, 175,000 lunches are delivered to the city's office workers by dabbawallas, who carry hundreds of three-tier tiffin boxes ('dabbas') filled with a fresh, home-cooked meal. In a nod to this cultural quirk, modern Indian restaurant Talli Joe has created a lunchtime 'dabba mania' menu. The dabbas will have a half plate, a small plate and a side plate, with each option reflecting the flavours of a particular region, like the Jaipur dabba which will consist of mutton curry, mutter kachori (a fried puff pastry filled with spiced peas) and bajre ki roti, a millet-based flatbread. Sadly there'll be no dabbawallas included, so you'll have to get yourself to the Shaftesbury Avenue restaurant instead.
There are many reasons to love this tiny Bangkok café in Mansion House, the first being the pad prik king belly pork curry – pork stir-fried in red curry paste with fine beans and kaffir lime leaves, served with satisfyingly sticky white or brown rice. There's heaps to choose from, including salads and sides (chicken satay, we're looking at you), but we're particularly enamoured with the curries that the company is known for. The best bit? The pots are BIG, so there's no way you'll be left hungry.
When buying lunch, there are several important things to consider: is it actually going to fill you up? Or is it going to be too much, so you end up falling asleep at your desk within half an hour of eating? Most importantly, is it going to be tasty enough to stop you raiding the biscuit tin in the afternoon? Authentic Japanese ramen bar Kanada-Ya's offering ticks all of the boxes, from original ramen in 18-hour pork broth with hand-pulled noodles, nori and wood ear fungus (Yes, that exists, and yes, we love it.) to the onigiri rice balls that are perfect if you're just looking for something small. You can even get a cheeky little matcha soft-serve ice cream to finish.
Fancy something a little bit different? Try Egyptian street food joint Koshari, which now has a grand total of three London locations. Koshari (the dish, that is) is a satisfying pot of rice, pasta and lentils, topped with chickpeas, tomato sauce, caramelised onions, and served with garlic vinaigrette. You can have it topped with okra, okra and lamb, lamb and beef, and extra pot of onions, or torchi – a concoction of pickled carrots, cucumber, capsicums and turnips. There's also salata baladi, an Egyptian take on a Greek salad, and salata burghul, with cracked wheat with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, parsley and a pomegranate dressing, not to mention our particular favourite, bourek: warm, flaky, filo pastry parcels filled with either feta cheese or lamb and feta.
