The peppery, porky majesty of Le Pichets cœur de porc fumé.
The peppery, porky majesty of Le Pichet's cœur de porc fumé. Le Pichet

Currently, America spends more on prepared meals than groceries, which means we eat out a lot. The typical American office drone goes hunting for a poke bowl most days of the week, rather than bringing themselves a ham sandwich. Food prices are artificially cheap, and time is ever valuable, so the economics of getting a sandwich and a beer at HoneyHole after work—despite that sandwich and beer being slightly more expensive than the equivalent materials from the grocery store—actually work out in favor of dining out. Home cooking is now more sport than sustenance, given to elaborate cookbook recipes from famous restaurants rather than quick and easy staples.

None of this is to judge. I eat out for 90 percent of my meals. I couldn’t tell you what’s in my fridge right now, besides insulin. And, like every other harried American, I often go out for sustenance’s sake alone.

However, when I eat alone at Le Pichet’s classic zinc bar, I am always reminded how important it is to take yourself out and really dine. Not getting it to go and eating at your desk. Not waiting in line at a counter and sitting alone at a formica booth while scrolling through your news feed. Dining. Having a glass of wine or a pint, getting a first course or dessert or cheese, settling in, reading a book. These are all things that we Americans do not do, despite eating out more than we ever have.

Maybe it is because I have the privilege to be a knowledge worker, but I find that a long, idle lunch, spent reading something physical and substantive, or even just quietly contemplating life and the way it is, is often more productive than pounding the keyboard.

While the somewhat faddish obsession with the link between idleness and ideation is not unwelcome, I think it perhaps misses the simplest reason that being idle makes us better at knowledge work: it’s super fucking important to your mental health. Sure, you might come up with the next breakthrough algorithm to efficiently deliver Bad Boy motorcycle decals via drone in under an hour, but even if you’re a car parker, as I once was, you might also just give yourself the space to relax your mind and center yourself and not leave the e-brake off on some dickhead’s Maserati and break out into gabbling, maniacal laughter as it rolls down the hill into traffic.

Long story short, sometimes you need to chill, and for many more sane cultures than ours, that time is right around lunch. In my opinion, there is no place more chill to have lunch than Le Pichet. Usually, I go for their tartine, an open-faced sandwich consisting of two slices of hearty country bread slathered in your choice of charcuterie. Or, if you’re crafty, one slice of hearty country bread slathered in charcuterie, and one slathered in butter and chèvre. Order a salad verte, slip one of those mustardy leaves of butter lettuce between your two sandwich halves, compress, and voila—you have the city’s secret best sandwich.

Today, however, I’m here to tell you about a different kind of meaty delight, but one that is every bit as able to whisk you away to meditative lunchtime bliss. Their summer menu includes a lovely dish of cœur de porc fumé, or thinly sliced smoked pork heart. It’s served on a bed of butter lettuce, with radishes and a lovely gribiche, which is essentially a very thin egg salad. It is a mayonnaise-based sauce, with little bits of chopped cornichon and hard-boiled egg in it, as well as capers. It is salty and fatty and tangy and generally amazing.

The real star of the show, however, is that pork heart. It comes in a magnificent mound and is smoked to the point of absolutely perfect pliancy. Unlike that always disappointing black pepper salami you get at the grocery store, you can actually taste the black pepper it was coated in. I don’t know about you, but when someone promises me black pepper, I expect to be able to taste every single cracked kernel of goodness. And y’all can miss me with that pre-ground powder shit.

Anyway, this peppered pork heart delivers in a big way. The smooth gribiche balances out the bold, unwavering flavors of the pork nicely, and the bed of lettuce gives the whole thing the feeling of a pleasant summertime picnic. Paired with a lighter bodied red, or a glass of the cheap Gascogne they always seem to have on the list, it’s the perfect way to escape from the incessant pressures of life in the digital economy. The bar faces away from the street, so unless you feel like studying every single cheese label they have framed on the wall, it lends itself well to introspection. The service at Le Pichet is also conducive to this, as they’ve mastered the art of gliding in at exactly the point where you wanted another glass of wine or to indulge in an after lunch ounce of cheese but leaving you to your own devices otherwise. It is truly a sixth sense.

To conclude, I would urge you to, for at least one of the meals out you will inevitably eat this week, treat yourself to a long, leisurely lunch. Perhaps it is a thing to be celebrated, this fast casual supply chain efficiency we’ve created to feed ourselves, but I fear that we’ve lost sight of those meals that should be special. There are few better places to find it again than the bar at Le Pichet.