It’s not your everyday bag although, in many respects, it is indeed just an ordinary brown paper bag – but with foil on. I don’t recall having seen this combination before when munching my way through a multitude of sarnies and salads. I don’t think I’ve ever had cause previously to pause and acknowledge the foiling on my lunch bag. Perhaps I just don’t eat at the right places.
It is an odd pairing though. Foiling is still the marker for a hint of luxury or class, on everything from wedding invitations to chocolate boxes. People keep foiled stuff, almost as if the shiny bits really were valuable. So why put it on one of the most ephemeral of all paper products – the lunch bag? Typically this lasts no longer that the time it takes to scurry back to one’s desk and rip it open with the haste of a caveman slicing into a dead deer. The bag is instantly disposable, one step away from being food waste. It’s barely even paper.
And yet this one has foil. It is a product of the popular misschu Vietnamese tuckshops (yes, I was there for the lemongrass beef salad) and is promoting a new eatery with a focus on potatoes (that shiny blob is meant to be two potatoes, I think, not a golden turd). The bag is produced by Gispac (‘we are bags…’), an Australian bag maker.
