Our french neighbour was chatting to us yesterday at around midi. As he left he said ‘bon appétit’, then hesitated and asked what the british say to mean the same thing.
I had to confess there isn’t a corresponding british expression.
Or is there?
I’ve heard people say “enjoy” but that’s in the context of sitting around a dinner table - we don’t really “do lunch” like the French do so it doesn’t really arise I think.
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It’s “bon appetit”. 
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Ditto.
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I would say “enjoy your lunch” in similar circumstances.
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We claim to think you say “bon courage” and then snigger to ourselves, meanly.
I say “have a good lunch”, if anything, when speaking English.
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France is a Catholic country so necessarily you enjoy food and other pleasures of the flesh, and therefore have a phrase like Bon appétit.
The UK is protestant so any enjoyment of the sensual is suspect. So we don’t have such a phrase. Some of us give thanks, of course.
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We used to say grace thus in about 1 second at prep school
‘Sit nomen domini benedictum, per iesum christum salvatorem nostrum amen’ and I note there’s no mention of actual food or thanks for it at all. Actually our food was fabulous.
At school we said ‘for what we are about to receive may the lord make us truly thankful’ which was appropriate because it was so exceedingly awful only divine intervention could make us thankful for it.
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AKA the Piece of Cod That Passeth All Understanding.
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At home we used to say “Thank God for my good dinner please may I leave the table”.
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gosh that takes me back… we kids had to ask before getting down from the table… and it wasn’t a given that we would be allowed to dash off… sometimes we had to sit and wait right until everyone had finished… aaaargh…
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I am Victorian Parent and also French so my children all had to sit through meals no matter how long and be conversational (sparkle and scintillate) because being boring is the worst and so rude. My children aren’t very old 
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Oh, we were polite and always finished a mouthful before chatting… it was just that we seemed to clear our plates long before the grownups… and we had to sit still, “stop wriggling”… and try to be interested, while longing to be outside playing…
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Me too. I haven’t thought of that in centuries.
does anyone remember (know about) FHB which was the password for “family hold back”… Mum would mutter FHB at us when she placed some delicious goodies on the table… it meant we had to ensure all guests had filled their plates before we could help ourselves… and we watched in horror (sometimes) when the guests tucked in with gusto… sometimes one of us had to “go without”
EDIT in those days, money was scarce… and delicious treats even scarcer… but Mum was determined not to let the guests know that this “spread” was not our normal fare… 
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And no speaking with your mouth full, no clattering, no elbows on the table, no reaching over your neighbour, no slurping (unless Chinese and Viet food, but sitting up straight, tasting everything, not bolting your food like a Labrador, no feeding dogs or cats, that’s probably it.
At my prep school we weren’t allowed to ask directly for something, so instead of ‘could you pass the water please Cressida’ we had to say to our neighbour ‘would you like some water, Cressida?’ to which she would reply ‘no thank you, but would you like some ?’ then when you said yes please you might be passed the jug. Very laborious but good for learning deferred gratification I suppose.
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bringing back even more memories…
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Plus no eating with your mouth open, no holding you knife like a fork (or vice-versa) , no stealing food off oma’s plate, and no speaking unless spoken to.
But we were allowed to say “tuck in”.
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Thanks.
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Ugh 
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