Work lunch: a new frontier.

I worked at the Broadcasting Board of Governors for three years in DC before I took my job in Prague. Our building was near the Federal Center SW metro, aka Land Where Food Options Are Nonexistent. I guess there was a Starbucks, a Potbelly’s, a strange salad/Chinese food bar, and (as a last resort) the cafeteria in the building (I heard reports of cockroaches but also reports of good souvlaki? I once got a slice of pizza and a V8 there under difficult circumstances) but nothing remarkable.

I typically brought my lunch with me (as I’d been doing at work for the last 10 years) — ideally cooking a large meal on Sundays and portioning it out in tupperware for the whole week.

After I moved to Prague, whoa, completely different lunch/eating routine. The cafeteria at work (so far no reports of creepy crawlies) is a bit quirky, but I’m able to eat new and semi-exciting foods every day. It is super weird to go from eating, like, rice with kale every weekday to eating a plate of something new every lunchtime. There is a Persian chef, so sometimes there are specials like Turkish pide (essentially a bread boat filled with meat = nomnomnom). Also, being originally Russian, I’m into the prepared salad selection, which is a lot of variations on cucumber-tomato salad. Once there was even vinegret (hands down, one of my favorite foods), though it was definitely an odd variation of it which included kidney beans.

Anyway, below are photos of 18 of my lunches. There are high points (grilled tuna steak with roasted vegetables) and low points (floppy cheese tortellini plus salad) but overall pretty solid!