Lunch Under the Towers

A business district eats twice. There is the expense-account dinner the precinct is famous for, and there is the Tuesday lunch that the people who work here actually live on. Sandton does both, and the trick to eating well here is knowing which one you are looking for.

The square and the centre

The centre of gravity is Nelson Mandela Square and the Sandton City complex attached to it. This is the precinct’s dining concentration: a dense run of restaurants around an open public square, anchored by the well-known statue, busy from lunch into the evening.

It is the obvious place and, for a first visit, the right one. It is also the most touristed, which means the usual rule applies: the tables with the best view of the square are rarely the ones with the best food. Walk one layer back from the prime frontage and the quality-to-price ratio improves.

The weekday layer

Away from the square, the precinct runs on a quieter food economy that no guide photographs: the delis, counters, bakeries and cafes built for the lunch trade inside and under the office towers. This is where the actual working precinct eats, fast and well, between meetings.

If you work here, this layer matters more than the destination restaurants. A good counter within a five-minute walk changes your working day more than a tasting menu you visit twice a year.

The rooftops

Sandton does the rooftop well, mostly through its hotels, where a high bar turns the skyline from something you work inside into something you look at with a drink. The views are genuinely good, the Leonardo and the towers of Sandton Central lit against the Highveld sky, and they are the right call for the end of a week or an evening with people in from out of town.

Treat them as an occasion rather than a habit. The rooftop is the celebration; the deli downstairs is the relationship.

Eating well, in one line

Use the square to orient, the weekday counters to actually eat, and the rooftops to mark the good evenings. And remember that lunch off the desk, somewhere with other people, in a precinct you can cross on foot, is one of the quiet arguments for working from Sandton in the first place.