Falafel

First off, I’d like to acknowledge that the big tech giant I work for offers incredible perks and feeds its employees nearly nonstop. I’m grateful to the men and women who deal with the fallout of the meals served in our cafés, for the constant restocking of snacks in our micro-kitchens and refreshes of SPA waters, their tireless pursuit of limiting waste while serving thousands of people an incredible variety of cuisines, including comforting ramen, spicy enchiladas, grilled meats of all kinds, soups by the bucket, salads galore, and my trusty go-to: falafel.

The café where I grab lunch almost daily was under construction for what seemed like forever. In reality it only took a year to turn a generic cafeteria into a marketplace style dining hall, drawing hordes of hungry humans into its snaking lines. People flocked to the new eatery, waiting patiently for a paneer sandwich or the occasional chimichurri steak, while I often gravitated to the grab-and-go falafel bowl.

Let’s pause here for a moment and admire this comforting combo: a base of kale salad, topped with a tangy cabbage slaw and roasted beets, crowned with exactly four perfectly crispy falafels, and drizzled with just-enough tahini dressing. Where’s the hummus, you might ask? In a separate bowl, garnished with a roasted vegetable du jour, ready to be picked up next to the falafel fare.

While the falafel is truly high grade, most days I go in with full intention of trying something else. But more often than not, the café lines are long, and since I’m generally impatient, more often than not, I zero in on the grab-and-go.

Then the whole world shut its doors in March 2020 and the next time I grabbed anything at said café was when we started to cautiously return to the office two years later. In those two years so much had changed, not only the way we worked but how we managed our basic existence. We got used to drinking coffee in our pajama bottoms and eating lunch at our desks, sometimes with cameras off when an especially messy bowl of fridge-lottery was our sustenance. We’ve…well, I’ve certainly forgotten how to eat in the office.

My first day back was a surreal dream, as I walked into a space literally frozen in time. When the pandemic began our team had been in the middle of a design sprint, and one day we were just told to continue from home. We quickly adjusted and moved on in our virtual silos. Yet, here were our sketches, post-its, and whiteboard notes — real proof of the time ‘before’ — still faithfully pinned to the soft walls of our war room.

I spent much of that day jetting from one conference room to the next, apologizing for being late to every single meeting. It appeared that our time online untrained us from buffering time between meetings, as we got comfortable hopping between groups, and sometimes continents, at a click of a button. I also wondered how we physically were able to go get lunch before.

I was truly looking forward to enjoying the falafel bowl again, even if I had to lunch during a meeting. What I didn’t anticipate was the now-foreign feeling of being in a room with my colleagues. Unlike the little squares on my computer screen, these live humans turned towards me when I spoke (what the heck?), and I couldn’t mute myself while I chewed my food (that’s awkward!). Mortified, I set my food aside, and yeah, the falafel was a bit cold and soggy when I returned to it later. Well, that was the last time I brought lunch to a meeting.

Slowly, very slowly, the habits of being in the office returned. There’s just one thing I can’t get used to, and that’s entering rooms which were recently occupied by other people. I have no choice, of course, since meetings are back-to-back and everyone’s trading places with everyone all the time. The stuffy air hits first, mixed with perfumes and whatever’s being served downstairs. But it’s the warm chairs that are by far the worst. I’ll leave it at that.

With more people showing up to work, the lunch lines got ever longer and falafel became my constant lunch companion. Then that dreadful email went out and we lost some of our colleagues. Then another email followed about the harsh economic climate. Then signs got quietly put up urging us to only take what we need and a few micro-kitchens started stocking only beverages. I knew it was serious when the falafel bowl went from four pieces to three.

Much of it was temporary and I’m happy to report that the falafel bowl is back to its original configuration. I did hear someone visiting from the Heartlands say, “wow, you still have LaCroix over here,” though to be clear, while things aren’t quite back to the pre-pandemic excesses, nobody’s going hungry or thirsty over here. Ever. The micro-kitchens are stocked with juices, snacks, sweets, and fruit in triplicate. Still hungry? You can literally grab a Snickers.

I wonder if I’ll ever find something else as perfect as the falafel bowl. It’s healthy, delicious, and most importantly, it’s quick! Recently, I ventured to a café in the next building and picked up a delightful tomato and ricotta tartine. It tasted like summer on an uncharacteristically gloomy fall day and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The main drawback was that I had to wait for it, and that might have been its biggest flaw.