The Top Power Lunch Restaurants
Le Coucou
New York
A French star makes his American debut.
On a hot late-summer afternoon, Le Coucou stands out like an oasis of cool before you even enter the door. Lush green plants climb the exterior wall, and huge windows hint at the airy, softly lit space within. Winner of the James Beard Foundation’s 2017 Best New Restaurant award, Le Coucou is the American debut of Chicago native Daniel Rose, who built his reputation in Paris. The food from his open kitchen combines the best of those culinary worlds: the technical sophistication and craft of the City of Light and the creative energy and extraordinary ingredients available in New York. All sorts of businesspeople are making the pilgrimage to Le Coucou to pay homage, from tech execs in hoodies and shorts to dapper financial titans in jackets and ties. They may not share sartorial tastes, but the smiles on their faces after biting into Rose’s pike quenelle, whole young chicken with lemon or crab with a buckwheat crepe are indistinguishable.
Contact: 138 Lafayette St., 212.271.4252, lecoucou.com
Cost: $54 for two-course prix fixe
The Classics: Le Bernardin, Michael’s, 21 Club
Paley
Los Angeles
Return to mid-century glamour.
Paley looks like an old Hollywood set, and no wonder: The restaurant is housed in the landmark space where William S. Paley, chief executive of CBS, commissioned the building of Columbia Square in the 1930s. CBS Radio broadcast live shows with guests like Al Jolson, Bob Hope and Cecil B. DeMille; in the ’50s, TV joined the game. CBS left the building in 2007, but today, studio heads, agents and stars dine in the glamorous, reimagined space, which opened in 2016. LA cares about looks, and Paley delivers with a curvilinear bar, gorgeous light fixtures and leather banquettes. But there’s substance here too: expert crudo and hamachi rolls; complex salads bursting with flavor; and an array of mains, from buttermilk fried chicken to green curry pappardelle to seared salmon with piquillo peppers.
Contact: 6115 Sunset Blvd., 323.544.9430, paleyhollywood.com
Cost: $14 to $23 for entrées
The Classics: Craft Los Angeles, the Grill on the Alley, Spago Beverly Hills
Bad Hunter
Chicago
Vegetable focused in a meat-lover's paradise.
A Chicago steakhouse may represent the quintessential power lunch, but one of the hottest new spots in the Windy City is a “veg-forward” eatery with a great name that slyly pokes at its carnivore image. Bad Hunter isn’t against meat—there’s a braised lamb sandwich, and you can add a chicken kebab, sirloin skewer or tandoori shrimp to any salad—but the focus is on vegetables. And what a focus it is: Chef Dan Snowden, inspired by the bounty of Chicago’s farmers’ markets, is offering extraordinary vegetarian fare, from tempura fried lemons and broccoli with fennel pollen aioli, to a hominy aguachile, to a charred-beet French dip sandwich. The city’s real estate execs, cultural leaders and politicos are leaving their porterhouses behind (occasionally, at least) and traveling to the West Loop restaurant in droves.
Contact: 802 W. Randolph St., 312.265.1745, badhunter.com
Cost: $12 to $26 for salads and sandwiches
The Classics: Gibsons, Morton’s (Wacker Place)
Momofuku Las Vegas
Las Vegas
Add another star chef to the strip.
Vegas is known for fabulous outposts for star chefs from around the world, from Gordon Ramsey to Wolfgang Puck to Mario Batali. There’s something freeing about the city’s wild and celebratory atmosphere that gives restaurateurs license to indulge in excess and fun. Add David Chang to the list. The Momofuku empire, started in New York, opened its first western restaurant in the Cosmopolitan hotel in early 2017. There’s neon, a huge mural and a private dining room overlooking the strip. But it’s the Michelin-starred chef’s food that’s the biggest draw. From the extraordinary noodles, to the tasty roasted pork, kimchi and mizuna rice bowl, to a shrimp bun with spicy mayo and pickled red onion, Momofuku’s unique take on Asian cuisine is attracting the city’s local and traveling businesspeople alike.
Contact: The Cosmopolitan, Level 2, Boulevard Tower, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., 702.698.2663, vegas.momofuku.com
Cost: $17 to $34 for noodles and entrées
The Classic: McCormick & Schmick’s
La Petite Maison
Miami
The perfect eatery for an international city.
The first U.S. outpost of a 30-year-old brand, La Petite Maison has an international flair that’s just right for melting-pot Miami. Founded in Nice, France, and with locations in London, Dubai, Istanbul and Beirut, the restaurant includes many influences in its French-Mediterranean menu. There’s sea bream baked en papillote, beef skirt with chimichurri and house-made pappardelle with veal ragu. Light-filled, lovely and with enough formality to make it a great deal-making center for the city’s banking execs and music moguls, La Petite Maison is a new favorite in the Brickell financial district.
Contact: Brickell House, 1300 Brickell Bay Drive, 305.403.9133, lpmlondon.co.uk/miami
Cost: $20 to $160 for entrées
The Classics: Capital Grille, Prime 112
Coperta
Denver
Southern (Italian) comfort.
Coperta has a sense of humor: If you order the “power lunch,” you get a soft drink and cookies with your pollo alla diavola, bucatini all’Amatriciana or panini. But don’t mistake its charm and casual, though sophisticated, atmosphere as lightweight. Serious cooking is going on here thanks to chef Paul Reilly, who co-owns the restaurant with his sister, general manager Aileen Reilly. The two were raised in New York’s Hudson Valley, came to Colorado for college and opened up Denver’s popular farm-to-table Beast + Bottle in 2013. Coperta is their take on Roman and southern Italian cuisine, and Denver’s tech, environmental and civic leaders are making it their lunchtime home.
Contact: 400 E. 20th Ave., 720.749.4666, copertadenver.com
Cost: $8 to $19 for pasta and entrées; $14 to $26 for “power lunch” prix fixe
The Classics: Elway’s, Ocean Prime, the Palm
North Square Oyster
Boston
Classic dishes freshly conceived.
If you want to impress a lunch date, you can hardly do better than the triple-decker shellfish tower at North Square Oyster. Adding three crudos of choice, an ounce of caviar, a king crab and two half-lobsters to its rows of oysters, littlenecks and shrimp, the dish is a thing of beauty. But it isn’t the only star on the seafood restaurant’s menu: There’s tuna poke with seaweed, a clam chowder boule with house-made kombucha sourdough and fat lobster rolls, cold or hot. It’s all familiar, but newly conceived. Overlooking the oldest public square in America, North Square Oyster is just north of Boston’s financial district, and wealth managers, securities traders and insurance execs are among those clamoring for its lunch reservations. What’s better than fresh seafood in a historic New England location?
Contact: 5 North Square, 617.829.4975, northsquareoyster.com
Cost: $14 to $29 for entrées
The Classic: the Bristol
Q by Peter Chang
Bethesda, Md.
A peripatetic chef hangs his hat.
Calvin Trillin famously wrote a New Yorker feature in 2010 about the beleaguered fans of Peter Chang. The chef had created “remarkable Szechuanese cuisine” in a series of restaurants around D.C., but had a tendency to disappear. Now Chang has opened an 8,000-square-foot space in downtown Bethesda, and devoted Changians—not to mention the legions made curious by the chef’s mystique—are rejoicing. D.C. lobbyists and politicians are joining local real estate power brokers and businesspeople to sample Chang’s dim sum, crispy pork belly, Peking duck and “hot and numbing fish in clay pot.” It’s looking like he might be here to stay—the handsome space is a departure from the strip-mall joints that he favored in the past—but just in case, you might want to make a reservation soon.
Contact: 4500 East-West Hwy., 240.800.3722, qbypeterchang.com
Cost: $11 to $20 for entrées
The Classics: the Monocle, the Oval Room, the Palm
Bird Dog
Palo Alto, Calif.
Silicon Valley grows up.
Influenced by Japanese cuisine, elevated by Northern California’s bounty and nurtured by tremendous wealth, San Francisco has long had an exciting restaurant scene. But neighboring Silicon Valley suffered from the stuck-in-college tastes of many of its residents. Increasingly, that’s no longer the case, and Bird Dog is an excellent example of the VC and tech hub’s newly sophisticated palate. Chef Robbie Wilson trained in France and honed his skills at Craft in New York, the French Laundry in Napa and Matsuhisa Aspen. At Bird Dog, he’s cooking up delectable plates from salmon with burnt cucumber, to pork katsu with smoked banana, to a pine-smoked unagi sandwich. Even the drinks are intriguing: They include a sugar snap fizz made with yuzu and orange bitters.
Contact: 420 Ramona St., 650.656.8180, birddogpa.com
Cost: $16 to $28 for entrées
The Classic: Tamarine
The Collins Quarter
Savannah, Ga.
Australian cafe culture in the Deep South.
Forget four-martini lunches; coffee is the fuel of business deals today—and the Collins Quarter, a homey incarnation of Australia’s café culture, is the place to enjoy it in Savannah. There are six kinds of espresso, a Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk, French press, Brooklyn drip, an affogato, a matcha latte—and more. Opened by Anthony Debreceny, an Aussie, the Collins Quarter also offers a menu of Southern comfort via his home country, from “swine time beni”—brioche French toast topped with pulled pork, tomato, poached egg, Hollandaise and bacon—to “biscuits gone wild”—house-made buttermilk biscuits with apple-raisin-chicken sausage, smoked bacon gravy, fennel-apple slaw and poached egg. And when locals just need a jolt of caffeine to get through the day, they visit the Collins Quarter’s coffee window for a fix.
Contact: 151 Bull St., 912.777.4147, thecollinsquarter.com
Cost: $11 to $18 for entrées
The Classics: the Olde Pink House, Vic’s on the River
Le Coucou
New York
A French star makes his American debut.
On a hot late-summer afternoon, Le Coucou stands out like an oasis of cool before you even enter the door. Lush green plants climb the exterior wall, and huge windows hint at the airy, softly lit space within. Winner of the James Beard Foundation’s 2017 Best New Restaurant award, Le Coucou is the American debut of Chicago native Daniel Rose, who built his reputation in Paris. The food from his open kitchen combines the best of those culinary worlds: the technical sophistication and craft of the City of Light and the creative energy and extraordinary ingredients available in New York. All sorts of businesspeople are making the pilgrimage to Le Coucou to pay homage, from tech execs in hoodies and shorts to dapper financial titans in jackets and ties. They may not share sartorial tastes, but the smiles on their faces after biting into Rose’s pike quenelle, whole young chicken with lemon or crab with a buckwheat crepe are indistinguishable.
Contact: 138 Lafayette St., 212.271.4252, lecoucou.com
Cost: $54 for two-course prix fixe
The Classics: Le Bernardin, Michael’s, 21 Club
Paley
Los Angeles
Return to mid-century glamour.
Paley looks like an old Hollywood set, and no wonder: The restaurant is housed in the landmark space where William S. Paley, chief executive of CBS, commissioned the building of Columbia Square in the 1930s. CBS Radio broadcast live shows with guests like Al Jolson, Bob Hope and Cecil B. DeMille; in the ’50s, TV joined the game. CBS left the building in 2007, but today, studio heads, agents and stars dine in the glamorous, reimagined space, which opened in 2016. LA cares about looks, and Paley delivers with a curvilinear bar, gorgeous light fixtures and leather banquettes. But there’s substance here too: expert crudo and hamachi rolls; complex salads bursting with flavor; and an array of mains, from buttermilk fried chicken to green curry pappardelle to seared salmon with piquillo peppers.
Contact: 6115 Sunset Blvd., 323.544.9430, paleyhollywood.com
Cost: $14 to $23 for entrées
The Classics: Craft Los Angeles, the Grill on the Alley, Spago Beverly Hills
Bad Hunter
Chicago
Vegetable focused in a meat-lover's paradise.
A Chicago steakhouse may represent the quintessential power lunch, but one of the hottest new spots in the Windy City is a “veg-forward” eatery with a great name that slyly pokes at its carnivore image. Bad Hunter isn’t against meat—there’s a braised lamb sandwich, and you can add a chicken kebab, sirloin skewer or tandoori shrimp to any salad—but the focus is on vegetables. And what a focus it is: Chef Dan Snowden, inspired by the bounty of Chicago’s farmers’ markets, is offering extraordinary vegetarian fare, from tempura fried lemons and broccoli with fennel pollen aioli, to a hominy aguachile, to a charred-beet French dip sandwich. The city’s real estate execs, cultural leaders and politicos are leaving their porterhouses behind (occasionally, at least) and traveling to the West Loop restaurant in droves.
Contact: 802 W. Randolph St., 312.265.1745, badhunter.com
Cost: $12 to $26 for salads and sandwiches
The Classics: Gibsons, Morton’s (Wacker Place)
Momofuku Las Vegas
Las Vegas
Add another star chef to the strip.
Vegas is known for fabulous outposts for star chefs from around the world, from Gordon Ramsey to Wolfgang Puck to Mario Batali. There’s something freeing about the city’s wild and celebratory atmosphere that gives restaurateurs license to indulge in excess and fun. Add David Chang to the list. The Momofuku empire, started in New York, opened its first western restaurant in the Cosmopolitan hotel in early 2017. There’s neon, a huge mural and a private dining room overlooking the strip. But it’s the Michelin-starred chef’s food that’s the biggest draw. From the extraordinary noodles, to the tasty roasted pork, kimchi and mizuna rice bowl, to a shrimp bun with spicy mayo and pickled red onion, Momofuku’s unique take on Asian cuisine is attracting the city’s local and traveling businesspeople alike.
Contact: The Cosmopolitan, Level 2, Boulevard Tower, 3708 Las Vegas Blvd. S., 702.698.2663, vegas.momofuku.com
Cost: $17 to $34 for noodles and entrées
The Classic: McCormick & Schmick’s
La Petite Maison
Miami
The perfect eatery for an international city.
The first U.S. outpost of a 30-year-old brand, La Petite Maison has an international flair that’s just right for melting-pot Miami. Founded in Nice, France, and with locations in London, Dubai, Istanbul and Beirut, the restaurant includes many influences in its French-Mediterranean menu. There’s sea bream baked en papillote, beef skirt with chimichurri and house-made pappardelle with veal ragu. Light-filled, lovely and with enough formality to make it a great deal-making center for the city’s banking execs and music moguls, La Petite Maison is a new favorite in the Brickell financial district.
Contact: Brickell House, 1300 Brickell Bay Drive, 305.403.9133, lpmlondon.co.uk/miami
Cost: $20 to $160 for entrées
The Classics: Capital Grille, Prime 112
Coperta
Denver
Southern (Italian) comfort.
Coperta has a sense of humor: If you order the “power lunch,” you get a soft drink and cookies with your pollo alla diavola, bucatini all’Amatriciana or panini. But don’t mistake its charm and casual, though sophisticated, atmosphere as lightweight. Serious cooking is going on here thanks to chef Paul Reilly, who co-owns the restaurant with his sister, general manager Aileen Reilly. The two were raised in New York’s Hudson Valley, came to Colorado for college and opened up Denver’s popular farm-to-table Beast + Bottle in 2013. Coperta is their take on Roman and southern Italian cuisine, and Denver’s tech, environmental and civic leaders are making it their lunchtime home.
Contact: 400 E. 20th Ave., 720.749.4666, copertadenver.com
Cost: $8 to $19 for pasta and entrées; $14 to $26 for “power lunch” prix fixe
The Classics: Elway’s, Ocean Prime, the Palm
North Square Oyster
Boston
Classic dishes freshly conceived.
If you want to impress a lunch date, you can hardly do better than the triple-decker shellfish tower at North Square Oyster. Adding three crudos of choice, an ounce of caviar, a king crab and two half-lobsters to its rows of oysters, littlenecks and shrimp, the dish is a thing of beauty. But it isn’t the only star on the seafood restaurant’s menu: There’s tuna poke with seaweed, a clam chowder boule with house-made kombucha sourdough and fat lobster rolls, cold or hot. It’s all familiar, but newly conceived. Overlooking the oldest public square in America, North Square Oyster is just north of Boston’s financial district, and wealth managers, securities traders and insurance execs are among those clamoring for its lunch reservations. What’s better than fresh seafood in a historic New England location?
Contact: 5 North Square, 617.829.4975, northsquareoyster.com
Cost: $14 to $29 for entrées
The Classic: the Bristol
Q by Peter Chang
Bethesda, Md.
A peripatetic chef hangs his hat.
Calvin Trillin famously wrote a New Yorker feature in 2010 about the beleaguered fans of Peter Chang. The chef had created “remarkable Szechuanese cuisine” in a series of restaurants around D.C., but had a tendency to disappear. Now Chang has opened an 8,000-square-foot space in downtown Bethesda, and devoted Changians—not to mention the legions made curious by the chef’s mystique—are rejoicing. D.C. lobbyists and politicians are joining local real estate power brokers and businesspeople to sample Chang’s dim sum, crispy pork belly, Peking duck and “hot and numbing fish in clay pot.” It’s looking like he might be here to stay—the handsome space is a departure from the strip-mall joints that he favored in the past—but just in case, you might want to make a reservation soon.
Contact: 4500 East-West Hwy., 240.800.3722, qbypeterchang.com
Cost: $11 to $20 for entrées
The Classics: the Monocle, the Oval Room, the Palm
Bird Dog
Palo Alto, Calif.
Silicon Valley grows up.
Influenced by Japanese cuisine, elevated by Northern California’s bounty and nurtured by tremendous wealth, San Francisco has long had an exciting restaurant scene. But neighboring Silicon Valley suffered from the stuck-in-college tastes of many of its residents. Increasingly, that’s no longer the case, and Bird Dog is an excellent example of the VC and tech hub’s newly sophisticated palate. Chef Robbie Wilson trained in France and honed his skills at Craft in New York, the French Laundry in Napa and Matsuhisa Aspen. At Bird Dog, he’s cooking up delectable plates from salmon with burnt cucumber, to pork katsu with smoked banana, to a pine-smoked unagi sandwich. Even the drinks are intriguing: They include a sugar snap fizz made with yuzu and orange bitters.
Contact: 420 Ramona St., 650.656.8180, birddogpa.com
Cost: $16 to $28 for entrées
The Classic: Tamarine
The Collins Quarter
Savannah, Ga.
Australian cafe culture in the Deep South.
Forget four-martini lunches; coffee is the fuel of business deals today—and the Collins Quarter, a homey incarnation of Australia’s café culture, is the place to enjoy it in Savannah. There are six kinds of espresso, a Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk, French press, Brooklyn drip, an affogato, a matcha latte—and more. Opened by Anthony Debreceny, an Aussie, the Collins Quarter also offers a menu of Southern comfort via his home country, from “swine time beni”—brioche French toast topped with pulled pork, tomato, poached egg, Hollandaise and bacon—to “biscuits gone wild”—house-made buttermilk biscuits with apple-raisin-chicken sausage, smoked bacon gravy, fennel-apple slaw and poached egg. And when locals just need a jolt of caffeine to get through the day, they visit the Collins Quarter’s coffee window for a fix.
Contact: 151 Bull St., 912.777.4147, thecollinsquarter.com
Cost: $11 to $18 for entrées
The Classics: the Olde Pink House, Vic’s on the River
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