Lunch

Darlene Boline Moseng, who did catering and private chef-ing, is into her third week of A La Maison (53 W. Lancaster Ave., Ardmore, 484-412-8009), a rustic French BYOB in the Main Line storefront that was Jewel of India. Moseng, a graduate of the Restaurant School, is keeping it traditional on a blackboard menu - coq au vin, short ribs, steak frites (dinner entrees: $21 to $28). She's backed in the kitchen by Maurice deRamus (Zen in Northern Liberties, Kujaku on the Parkway), and Marabella's alumna Lori Sexton is running the front of the house.

Just downstream from an industrial recycling operation and a stone's throw from a sewage treatment plant, a fisherman casts his line toward the passing barge traffic and watches it drop into the Delaware River. A couple eating lunch watch curiously. "No way would I ever eat anything from there," the woman says. The fishers who frequent the pier in Camden's Waterfront South neighborhood have heard it all before. That they're crazy, that they're going to grow an extra head or get sick from eating what they catch.

Culinary Institute of America grad Gregory Vernick, who spent most of his career in the Jean-Georges Vongerichten orbit opening his restaurants around the world, has come home to do the same for himself. With his wife, Julie, the Cherry Hill native opened Vernick Food & Drink (2031 Walnut St., 267-639-6644), in a bi-level brownstone. Food is simple and easy to understand. "If there are three ingredients listed on the menu, that's what's in it," he says. It's dinner only for now; see menu at www.philly.com/vernick . The atmosphere is one of unfussy comfort, as it is modeled on Euro cafes.

Revel, Revel, Revel . . . . That's all the noise one hears these days coming from the Jersey Shore - especially when it concerns new prospects for dining. Granted, the gleaming $2.4 billion tower of Atlantic City's latest casino resort is hard to miss. And with more than a dozen restaurant concepts involving some very big names, its spring debut has no doubt been the biggest food news to hit this casino town since the Borgata began A.C.'s high-end remake. Jose Garces should have Philadelphians' attention right off the bat with three restaurants: an outsize version of Amada with ocean views and flamenco; a jumbo Village Whiskey clone for gourmet burgers and booze; plus Nuevo Mex concept with a Distrito Cantina serving margaritas and a replica Guapo's Taco truck.

Despite Jamie Oliver's best intentions, the obstacles to making healthy homemade school lunches are still daunting: busy working parents, limited food budgets, picky kids, the temptations of processed foods at every turn. Yet the solution, for some lunch-packing parents, might be as simple as finding the right container: trading in the American brown bag for the Japanese bento box. With a long history in Japan and variations in Korea, India, and the Philippines, the multi-compartment bento box is not new, but in recent years it has gained popularity as a lunch box among health-conscious parents.

WASHINGTON - During his day off in Washington, Charlie Manuel ate lunch and dinner with his daughter, Julie, who works in the city. She was able to take an extra hour for lunch, but only because of her dad's stature. "Her boss said it was OK as long as I get him World Series tickets," Manuel said. How many times do you think Manuel has been asked to do that favor? - Matt Gelb

Almost every working day, a secretary for Montgomery County's two Republican commissioners calls a restaurant near the Norristown courthouse to ask about the daily luncheon specials. Orders are placed, a box filled with lunches is delivered, and four high- ranking county officials share a quiet lunch behind closed doors. Taxpayers pick up the tab. Last year, the lunch bills totaled $5,587, according to county records released yesterday by Democratic minority Commissioner Rita C. Banning.

Crunch. Munch. Slurp. Crunch. Munch. Slurp. What's that? It's the guy at the next desk having lunch. The number of folks who have taken to dining al desko is causing some new problems in the workplace. A co-worker who doesn't wipe up her spilled soup in the microwave is as irritating as the guy who never replaces the paper in the copy machine. And the smell of frozen flounder florentine is as noxious to some as now- banned cigarette smoke used to be to many.

A REPRESENTATIVE of the city slipped a little surprise under the windshield wiper of my car when it was parked in the shadow of the Convention Center on 13th Street near Arch the other day. I received my first parking ticket. I had carefully weighed my decision to back into that spot in a one-hour parking zone. After the first quarter clicked and the little arrow on the meter granted me 15 minutes, I glanced at the parking lot next to me. Should I stay at the metered spot and have to interrupt lunch with my friend Kia to dash back to feed the hungry machine, I wondered?

I peered at the itinerary clipped onto my handlebars and read the name: "Abbaye de Pontleroy. " In front of us, the sign read "Ferm?. " "Strike two," my husband said, getting back onto his bike. We had left Montrichard that morning, planning to tour some of the Loire Valley's lesser-known castles. It was late September, after the high season - still good for biking but not, apparently, for smaller tourist destinations. First a ch?teau and now the abbey: both closed. To make matters worse, after four hours of cycling, we still hadn't found lunch.

Culinary Institute of America grad Gregory Vernick, who spent most of his career in the Jean-Georges Vongerichten orbit opening his restaurants around the world, has come home to do the same for himself. With his wife, Julie, the Cherry Hill native opened Vernick Food & Drink (2031 Walnut St., 267-639-6644), in a bi-level brownstone. Food is simple and easy to understand. "If there are three ingredients listed on the menu, that's what's in it," he says. It's dinner only for now; see menu at www.philly.com/vernick . The atmosphere is one of unfussy comfort, as it is modeled on Euro cafes.

Restaurants want to be where the action is, and 18th Street from Market Street to Rittenhouse Square is one of the busiest restaurant corridors in Center City. Like the proverbial birds of a feather, a growing clutch of eateries, approaching two dozen, is catering to the lunch crowd. In the last week, a soup/salad/sandwich place called Brodo took a spot in the United Plaza building, just south of Market. Across the street, a Japanese soup restaurant called Nom Nom Ramen opened in March, and the vegan takeout HipCityVeg opened two weeks ago just north of the square, next to what may become a Crumbs Bake Shop . The week-old Rittenhouse Tavern , in the Art Alliance at the southeastern corner of the square, expects to join the lunch fray.

LOS ANGELES — The crowd is shoulder to shoulder at Joan's on Third. Power couples buy their toddlers "babyccinos" (steamed milk sprinkled with cocoa), and lithe women with "it" bags poise their forks over Chinese chicken salads. A voice from a loudspeaker interrupts the thrum: "If you are driving a white Jaguar parked in the back behind another car, please move your vehicle. " Just another morning at Joan's. What started as a tiny catering kitchen on Third Street, is, 14 years later, an L.A. institution.

Hello there! In summer 2009, Michelle was living in Indiana, but traveling with her Cajun-themed food-service business and friends' similar businesses to festivals and fairs around the country. Working a music festival in West Virginia, she befriended Zack, a Philadelphian who was in charge of ensuring that the musicians ate. Michelle came here to visit Zack a month later; he asked if he could bring a friend along to lunch at P.F. Chang's. That friend was David. And by the end of lunch, David was smitten.

More than 10,000 people around the region will take a fitness-inducing midday stroll Wednesday to mark National Walk @ Lunch Day. Half of them will be walking laps around Rittenhouse Square. Will it make much of a difference? Not if the walkers are looking to lose weight fast. An average person walking at an average pace for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, would need about seven weeks to expend the 3,500 calories that equals one pound. But there is a bigger point, said Gary D. Foster, director of Temple University's Center for Obesity Research and Education, who reluctantly did the math because there is a broader message in this: "Walking is a fantastic thing to do. Because it improves your health.

Here we go again. At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama argued that the country's spiraling debt was largely the result of exploding health-care costs. That was true. He then said the cure for these exploding costs would be his health-care reform. That was not true. It was obvious at the time that it could never be true. If government gives health insurance to 33 million uninsured, that costs. Costs a lot. There's no free lunch. Now we know. The Congressional Budget Office's latest estimate is that Obamacare will add $1.76 trillion in federal expenditures through 2022.

When it comes to keeping employees happy, a pat on the back may be worth more than a raise in pay. At least that's what the 28,383 men and women who responded to our Top Workplaces 2012 survey say. Feeling appreciated at work and believing that their work has meaning tops the list of conditions that matter to Philadelphia-area workers. And although workers want to be paid what's fair, how much they make matters less than how they feel about their work and the people for whom they work.

Charles H. Taylor was having lunch at his Center City eatery with actress Julie Harris when a poignant moment intruded. The pianist on duty realized that Harris had starred in the film East of Eden with the troubled James Dean, who died in 1955, the year the film was released. "He shifted into the music from East of Eden , and she began to cry," Mr. Taylor told an Inquirer interviewer in 1988, suggesting that Harris was comfortable enough to show emotion with him. Though a small lunch place, Taylor's Country Store had its fans, even some marquee names.

YESTERDAY was the annual Oscar nominee luncheon at which this year's Hollywood elite got together and dined on chopped vegetable salad, hors d'ouevres featuring Indochina spiced beef and roasted Asian barbecue duck, a main course of Atlantic salmon, and sorbet with mango sauce and berries for dessert. Sounds yummy. The most important thing on the menu, however, was good conversation among new and old friends. "A lot of people at home think we all hang out together," George Clooney told reporters.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - The first major nutritional overhaul of school meals in more than 15 years means most offerings - including the always popular pizza - will come with less sodium, more whole grains, and a wider selection of fruits and vegetables on the side. First lady Michelle Obama and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the new guidelines during a visit Wednesday with elementary students. Michelle Obama, also joined by celebrity chef Rachael Ray, said youngsters would learn better if they don't have growling stomachs at school.