Lunch is back minus the martinis

A few weeks ago, a restaurant critic who was visiting Boston called to discuss dining options. "Boston doesn't do much lunch, does it?" he asked. He was almost right. Until recently, most restaurants here were shuttered until nightfall.

But after years of a dearth of options beyond takeout sandwiches, Boston is beginning to wake up to the midday meal. L'Espalier, the epitome of fine dining in Back Bay, will offer lunch starting April 23. Gaslight Brasserie du Coin, the restaurant under construction by the Aquitaine Group on Harrison Avenue in the South End, will serve lunch midsummer. And two redos -- Boston Public, which will take the place of Restaurant L in Louis Boston, and KO Prime, replacing Spire in Nine Zero Hotel -- will both have an emphasis on lunch. These, and popular lunch spots as stylish as Radius downtown and as casual as Picco in the South End, demonstrate that the landscape is changing.

L'Espalier owner Frank McClelland says he sees a shift from the perception that Bostonians work so hard that they only eat at their desks. "Each decade people are more willing to go out to lunch," says the chef, who has owned the restaurant since 1988. The success of lunch at Sel de la Terre, near the New England Aquarium, which he owns with chef Geoff Gardner, convinced him. It has to be quick, says McClelland, with "accurate service, good, hot food, and at a good price." He thinks it's a "simple formula, but successful if done right."

Where Sel de la Terre's country French cuisine and ambience is more relaxed, L'Espalier is known for its multilayered, luxurious prix fixe dinners. Its first-ever lunch will be a departure in several ways. Customers can order a menu, but they will also find a la carte dishes such as lump crab salad with rouille and grilled flat bread, and hanger steak with roasted peppers and spinach salad. First courses will range from $10 to $14, main courses from $15 and $20, a three-course prix fixe for $24. It will be "the deal of a century," says McClelland, whose dinner menus cost $75 to $94.

A deal for the customer can mean tough economics for the restaurant. People expect lunch to cost less than dinner and there are fewer liquor sales. Restaurateur Michela Larson, whose new Rocca will open on Harrison Avenue next week without lunch, says, "Lunch requires the same level of staffing and food costs, but the price points have to be much lower. It's an economic decision."

She recalls the 1980s when her first success, Michela's, was going strong in Cambridge. "People were going out to lunch, and were having a bit of wine, if not martinis," Larson says. But then the stock market reverses of the late '80s curtailed business expense accounts. The lunch trade stopped abruptly, she says. "Unless you're in a place with easy business," she says, "you spend as much trying to market it as you do for the rest of the place." Still, Rocca will offer brunch on weekends.

Although Larson feels the lower South End isn't ready for a burgeoning lunch business, Seth Woods and Jeffrey Gates think they can carve out a niche with Gaslight Brasserie du Coin and its adjacent takeout called Greenlight. "The reason we're doing lunch is economy of scale," says Woods, whose group also owns Aquitaine, Aquitaine Bis in Chestnut Hill, Union Bar & Grille in the South End, and others. Gaslight is hoping to tap into the local businesses and the medical community in the area.

Woods agrees that the lunch business is likely to be light in volume in his spot on Harrison. He thinks a critical mass of people may be years away as the lower South End gains residents, businesses, and foot traffic. But the restaurateur, who started lunch at Aquitaine on Tremont Street about a year ago, sees it as an investment. "One of our philosophies is that we like to be open all the time -- seven days and seven nights," he says. He thinks restaurants sometimes "have to make sacrifices" in emerging neighborhoods to build a client base.

McClelland foresees a varied clientele stopping by midday: businesspeople having meetings, women out for a day of shopping, a younger crowd curious to sample L'Espalier's cuisine at a lower price. He has noticed that his weekly Saturday teas and special events such as "Cheese Tuesdays" make the restaurant more approachable and broaden its market. And it's not as though there's no one in the kitchen early in the day. "I was here at 9 in the morning," he says recently, "and I already had four cooks in the kitchen." Lunch won't be that much of a strain. "Our wait team loves to work lunch part-time."

The addition also helps to gear up his staff for future projects, including a second Sel de la Terre in the new Natick Collection, where lunch and dinner will be offered and the space will also have a boulangerie (a French bakery). It is scheduled to open in early September.

Hotel restaurants, such as The Federalist in XV Beacon Hotel, have always had to be open for lunch. Jamie Bissonnette, who will be chef of KO Prime in the Nine Zero Hotel, says the trick is satisfying hotel guests while appealing to business people as well. "My vision on lunch is that Boston people don't want to wait; they want to be in and out in 45 minutes," says Bissonnette, who is working with Ken Oringer, the consulting chef for whom the restaurant is named. He and Oringer wrote a lunch menu that will give mix-and-match options for main courses, salads, and grilled vegetables. Bissonnette, who was the former chef at Eastern Standard and considers himself very organized, says, "Hopefully, it will be all things to all people."

It has always bothered him that more places are not open midday. "My girlfriend and I call it lunch purgatory," he says. So he's anxious to fill the void. And also a little nervous, he admits. The restaurant will open for dinner May 9 and for lunch May 14.

In the Back Bay, where Pino Maffeo is also in the midst of renovations, the plans are to open the doors of Boston Public, first for lunch, then later for dinner -- a complete reversal of what restaurants usually do.

When Maffeo was cooking in Restaurant L at Louis Boston, he did a brisk lunch business, often surpassing his numbers at dinner. When he reopens in the same spot as Boston Public, which he also owns, he will offer old favorites and some new steakhouse ideas. Ribs with green Thai chili sauce, a Kobe burger with homemade cinnamon pickles, and roasted Thai noodles with Kobe beef and scrambled egg will all be on the lunch menu, says the chef, along with avocado and ahi tuna summer rolls "that we can't make enough of." Steaks, raw bar selections, and sharing plates of American and Asian small dishes, will also be added.

But he noticed that during this construction, customers in the building and others who shop regularly at Louis have been "depressed," he says. So he's reversing his roll out: Boston Public will open for lunch April 30, and will "slowly ease into dinner," Maffeo says.

Lunch here may not be the most profitable meal, but restaurateurs seem to be committed. "We aren't expecting leaps and bounds," says McClelland.

"If two people show up -- or two dozen -- we're in it for the long haul."