I don’t often get to "go" to lunch. But boy, do I know lunch. For those,like myself, who have spent most of their adult life in the food or restaurant business, lunch "on the other side" represents a big jam of people who all want to be in and out of the place in about one hour. Everyone arrives at approximately the same time, and they all want to leave at the same time. It makes for one pretty hairy hour.

    And lunch comes in a wide variety of flavors and tastes. It ranges from the "power lunch," where big business is done in deep booths, to the "casual lunch," where co-workers escape the office confines for a light entrée sometimes served with juicy gossip.

    Now lunch for adults is a much different feast than it is for children. When I was in elementary school, the local newspaper printed the school's hot lunch menu every Friday for the following week. My mother would cut it out and hang it on the refrigerator. Every morning she would yell down the hall to my brother, my sister and me and ask if we were "bringing" or "buying." This was a major decision because we were only allowed to buy twice a week. We would yell back down the hall to ask, "What is it today?" After a short pause, she would holler back, "Chicken a la King." Two "buys" and a "bring." My little sister didn’t like the mashed potatoes. I loved the creamy instant mashed potatoes covered with that milky white chicken gravy known as Chicken a la King. I especially loved the little white dinner roll. Remember? The dinner roll, the butter pat and the Jell-O were in the accompanying cellophane packet along with the plastic utensils and napkin. My very favorite was the pizza. Now, I only remember it as being soggy, but most everything was soggy by the time you got back to your table and carefully removed the tinfoil cover.

    On the days I brought my lunch, I could always expect a slight variation of the same thing: a turkey, ham or tuna sandwich on whole wheat with my mother’s trademark bite out of the middle. The sandwich always had what seemed like at least two tablespoons of mayonnaise on it, and the bread bore the deep impression of her knuckles from when she had cut the sandwich in half four hours earlier. She wrapped the sandwich tightly and perfectly, just as she would a birthday present, except she used waxed paper and, alas, there was no bow. (I never could figure out why she used waxed paper; all my friends' sandwiches were wrapped in clear plastic.) Then we got the baggie full of chips or Cheetos and the token piece of fruit, which was usually an apple thrown right on top of my sandwich, smashing it even more.

    Mom always finished it off by sneaking something wacky into my lunch box: a silly note, the head off one of my Barbie dolls, pop bottle caps and anything else she thought would make me laugh. One time, she filled my entire lunch bucket with my Halloween candy and taped a nickel to the inside with a note that read "be sure and get a milk." All this in a lunch bucket my mother had painted herself. Every year she would change the "theme." One year it was orange and covered with flowers and my name. Another year it was green and covered with great big ladybugs, and, of course, my name. My friends thought I had the best and nuttiest mom ever. I sure did.

    Now, I’m grown up, go to work and lunch as an adult becomes a totally different ball game. There are all kinds of lunches out there and a lot of ways to spend your lunch hour.

Working Lunch

    Probably the most dreaded lunch is the mandatory "working lunch." That's when either your boss or someone else's boss picks up the tab, but you would much rather be eating a peanut butter and jelly made at home. It starts when you’re sitting in a conference room with all the department heads, thinking to yourself, "This is so boring. This has nothing to do with me or my department. I wish he would just shut up a minute; doesn’t he know it’s almost 12:30?" You watch the hands of the clock move in slow motion. Your stomach growls.

    You reconsider eating the few leftover halves of grocery store-bought bagels still in the middle of the table from a few hours earlier. You resist and look at your watch again. A feeling of hope comes over you when he takes a pause, looks at his watch, and says, "It’s lunchtime." You sit up straight, close your note pad and start to scoot your chair out. Then he blurts out: "Betty, why don’t you call up the Cheese Shop and order a variety of sandwiches and drinks and a couple bags of those chips they have there?" The office manager gets stuck playing waitress and nobody's going anywhere. That, my friend, is a working lunch. The only consolation is that the Cheese Shop makes real fine sandwiches and your boss is buying.

Le Power Lunch

    Then there's the so-called "power lunch," to which I’ve never been invited. Apparently, two or more higher-ups gather in a booth, somewhere like Rainwater's or Dobson's, have at least a two-course lunch, maybe a beer or glass of wine (if we were anywhere but in Southern California I'd say a martini or two) and talk business. There is no paperwork at the table. This is more of a relationship-building or negotiating-type meeting. These people don’t take notes or pass documents around. They have assistants who do that.

Flower Power Lunch

    How about the Flower Power Lunch? For this tête-à-tête, you meet somewhere like The Zone (formerly Kung Food) and have brown rice with liquid amino acids and minerals on top. Next comes a plate of steamed veggies. Or you might take a drive up the coast and go to Ki's Café on Pacific Coast Highway for some buckwheat pancakes topped with cottage cheese and fresh fruit. In the Golden Triangle, Daily's on Towne Centre Drive rules the healthy lunch roost.

Lunch On The Road

    You've seen this guy out there, inhaling his "lunch on the road." He racks up more minutes on his car phone than he does on the phone at his desk. He runs from meeting to meeting, checking his voice mail in between sessions, only to find he now has 10 more messages than the last time he checked. This is the guy you see eating while driving ... yeah, him, the one with the stained tie. He actually has a lot of fast food options. Although I have never tried it, everyone tells me In-N-Out offers the very best in drive-by dining. Personally, I would drop by a neighborhood juice bar or smoothie joint (you know, there's one on every corner these days) and have myself a Big Gulp-sized health drink.

A Pretty Ladies Lunch

    For those who golf and decorate, there's the "ladies' lunch." This is also known as a "luncheon" or as "lunching." I have never been a part of this type of lunch either, although I have waited on and cooked for plenty of them. The basics are this: Be prepared to cook everything twice, and whatever you do, make sure the check total is correct before taking it to the table. I have seen the fiasco an extra iced tea can cause. The ladies lunch is usually somewhere very pretty, like Laurel or Delicia's, and somewhere the ladies' go in the evening with their husbands so the maitre d' knows them by name.

The Dreaded Lunch Date

    I don’t know a woman who hasn't been here - the harmless "Why don’t we get together for lunch?" My advice on the lunch date: Don't do it. To begin with, why doesn’t he ask you to dinner? Is he afraid to ask you for a real date? Not a good sign. Is he playing it safe? All I know is that men should wise up and leave lunching entirely up to the ladies or strictly for business purposes.

    Here's why: Number one, when I went on dates (I just got engaged, so that’s a past-tense circumstance) I wanted to look my best. Well, let me tell you, the noon sun shining down on my face is very unforgiving. Number two, men always choose somewhere outdoors thinking, "Oh, this will be casual." Lest I remind you, most summer months in San Diego it’s pretty hot out there and heat is very unkind to a woman's face. Finally, it’s pretty hard to squeeze all the wonderful things I had planned to tell my suitor about myself into that one hour. I’ve got to work fast. And I don’t even like to work that hard at work.

In A Sack

    Since we live in the best climate in the country, it makes sense to take advantage of the out-of-doors "sack lunch" and have an old-fashioned picnic where we can enjoy the sunshine or the waterfront. You could drop into one of the two La Fresqueria Shops in Downtown San Diego and pick up one of Celeste's delicious torta sandwich specials. Then grab something to drink and head over to Seaport Village, Balboa Park or Mission Bay and find a nice grassy area on which to plop and enjoy a relaxed, casual lunch.

A Casual 60

    The "casual lunch" is when you slip away with a few co-workers to talk Hollywood, politics and share office gossip, all within a quick 60 minutes. A great place for this lunch is Sunflowers Cafe and Bakery in the heart of the Golden Triangle. Located in the Union Bank of California Building, its outdoor patio overlooks all the comings and goings of La Jolla Drive. The staff is fast and friendly and the food's a deal.

A Bare Meal

    Oh, the "naked lunch." Remember the TV show, "Hill Street Blues?" (I know, I’m dating myself here.) Police Sgt. Furillo, who was played by Daniel J. Travanti, used to meet his district attorney girlfriend, played by Veronica Hamel, at a ritzy Downtown hotel for a "bite of lunch." They always had a bottle of chilled champagne next to the bed, and they spent the entire lunch hour talking about their cases, the legal system and if their affair was ever going to amount to anything. That, most definitely, falls into the category of the naked lunch.

    Perhaps it’s your anniversary and you want to kidnap your spouse for a few hours. If so, the naked lunch surely would be the way to go. Bon appetit!