At lunchtime on a summer day, the main dining room of the Center Club on the fifteenth floor of the Legg Mason building is relatively quiet. Henry Rosenberg Jr., former chair of Crown Oil, is holding court at the big round table reserved for groups, surrounded by men in white shirts and ties. They’re probably oil industry people, says Center Club general manager John Warnack. It looks like they’re talking business, although, in keeping with the club’s rules, there are no papers or electronic devices in sight.

Elsewhere in the dining room, a handful of club members—one is an executive from the United Way, another a local judge, Warnack says—sit in scattered pairs at tables along two long walls of windows.

 "You're at Chip Mason's table," Warnack tells me, referring to the former Legg Mason CEO. "He usually sits here." He gestures to the seat across from me, where my host, Mitch Halbrich, senior managing director at Mergis Interim Executives and a member of the club's membership committee, is sitting. "So his guest can enjoy the view." Indeed, I'm facing the Domino Sugars sign, and the vista spans all the way to Camden Yards, with Fort McHenry, Federal Hill, and every inch of the Inner Harbor spread out between.

The Center Club's fifteenth-floor dining room—the club occupies two stories, and the less formal Grill Room is upstairs—has long been known as the apogee of the Baltimore business lunch scene. Accordingly, the décor echoes an Old World men's club, with tasteful hints of a Hilton Conference Center. It's the place where captains of industry and their lieutenants broker deals over crab cakes and strip steaks. This summer, the club has loosened its tie-and-jacket rule, part of its effort to keep up with today's less-formal business world. Membership is down from 2,400 to around 1,800 in the past eight years, according to Halbrich. And some predict it may drop even more when Legg Mason, whose name is writ large across the building above our heads and whose employees currently occupy about ten of the thirty-five floors, moves to Harbor East.

Whether the Center Club can retain its status is anybody's guess. But one thing is certain: There will always be other places in town to eat lunch. The city's business community—and the restaurant scene—has diversified; less-exclusive downtown alternatives such as the Capital Grille or McCormick and Schmick's have moved in. And the way businesspeople eat has changed. Expense accounts have shrunk and ethics rules tightened. There's the daddy-track men who can't spend hours at lunch, more fluid employment undercutting the job security executives once enjoyed, and a society that values sobriety and obsesses over cholesterol. There's been another, perhaps more cataclysmic shift, as well.

"The proliferation of technology has changed things, " says Guy Flynn, a real estate lawyer for DLA Piper. Even ten years ago, business lunches were more frequent, he says. These days, constant digital communication has diminished the need for face-to-face encounters. But that same technology makes the occasional lunch all the more important: "It's a way to connect in a personal way in a world driven by electronics."

Joe Haskins, president and founding director of Harbor Bank, chooses his lunch dates carefully. "It's nice to get together with people you feel good about, but that may be a forty-five-minute lunch, as opposed to someone with whom you are trying to develop a business relationship."

That person, says Haskins, will get the whole deal: a full-bore Power Lunch.



Former Esquire editor Lee Eisenberg is credited with coining the term, in his 1979 article "America's Most Powerful Lunch." It's a phrase that, like "glass ceiling," probably took hold when increased numbers of women and minorities at high levels inspired labels as much to disparage conventions of the white male hierarchy as to aspire to them. Like the old joke about closing a meal by asking "How's business?" in order to justify writing it off, the very notion of a power lunch is imbued with self-mockery. Those who employ the term in earnest tend to be the ones that, like early adopters of mobile phones, enjoy a public show of importance. (And, thus, may not be as important as they think.)

In 1981, the New York Times described a proto-power lunch in 1960s Washington, D.C., as "two gentlemen, with their mothers' maiden names for first names, dining quietly at the Metropolitan Club, where women were banned, Jews were few in number and the only blacks wore white coats." In Baltimore, the equivalent scene might have transpired at Mount Vernon's similarly exclusive Maryland Club. The Center Club was established in Charles Center in 1962 as a more egalitarian alternative, although full club privileges for women didn't come along for another fifteen years or so.

Phyllis Brotman, who was one of those pioneering women—and the club's first female president, from 2003 to 2007—recalls the days when she had to escort male clients to a dining room reserved for ladies. "I always felt, Why am I here, when all these men are in the dining room?"

Over the years, Brotman, whose firm, Image Dynamics, handled public relations and advertising for corporations and political campaigns, has entertained plenty of men—and women—at the club. When the Center Club moved, Brotman says she was invited to help choose furniture and carpeting. And before resigning as president, she made sure she was appointed chair of the Renaissance Committee, tasked with redecorating the club.

Joe Haskins agrees that it took the Center Club a while to catch up with its democratic charter. The first time he attended was in the late 1970s, with George Rosso, the first chair of the fledgling Harbor Bank founded to serve Baltimore's minorities and small businesses. "There were only two other African Americans in the room," he recalls, "and the place was packed." These days, Haskins also lunches at the Capital Grille, where he's heartened to see a portrait of Thurgood Marshall hanging above the maitre d' station. "Business in Baltimore is much more of a merged and open process these days," he says. In spirit at least: "Now I can be the only African American in the Center Club, and I don't even notice."

Eddie Brown is also a member, but he often takes guests to the Dogwood Restaurant in Hampden. Founder and CEO of Brown Capital Management, Brown says the restaurant, which provides training to those in transition from incarceration and drug addiction, "gets a conversation going about something other than pure business. It makes for a more expansive conversation, about how this nonprofit entity is contributing to the life of Baltimore." For Brown, a lunch out is as much about getting to know a potential investor as it is setting a course for business. If the agenda is pure business, he'll order sandwiches in the conference room (oftentimes from Sascha's: "We like the little silver bags").

DLA Piper's Flynn, too, uses business lunches strategically: "The adage of breaking bread is appropriate," he says. "You can have the same meeting across a desk, but the beauty of a lunch is you can learn so much about someone through random chitchat." At a business lunch, "you're not just meeting a résumé or a business plan. You get to sit down and talk about what they do." Downtown, Flynn often chooses Brighton's at the Harbor Court Hotel, where the "executive lunch" is half a sandwich and a cup of soup—a far cry from the steak-and-martini days of old. But because his office is in Mount Washington, he frequently suggests the Ambassador Dining Room, the Indian restaurant near Charles Village known for its elegant décor and lunch buffet. "It's a more interesting and funky choice, " he says, and it tends to inspire conversation about travel and family (Flynn's wife is of Indian descent).

Choosing something off the beaten path tells your dining companion about the way you do business, says Mark Schroeder, general manager of the Castlebridge Group. The company, which develops and invests in renewable energy, is housed in the former King Syrup factory on Key Highway. "We're not Constellation," he says. "We're bohemian in style." Schroeder likes to take potential investors down the street to the Wine Market. "You feel comfortable in a coat and tie, but it has a little character," he says. Sometimes he'll suggest Friday lunch at Little Havana, "to celebrate in shorts and flip-flops."

American Visionary Art Museum founder Rebecca Hoffberger uses lunches to reinforce her offbeat reputation—and that of the institution she runs. "If I have sophisticated people visiting from New York or Los Angeles," she says, "where do you go that shows them what is really American?" Hoffberger's answer: Friendly Farm, a forty-nine-year-old family restaurant set on a farm in Upperco. The setting resembles a well-manicured golf course, and the menu features fried chicken and crab cakes with sides of pickled beets, apple butter, and cottage cheese, served family-style in heaping portions.

For Hoffberger, business meals are a burden—she'd rather do serious work around a conference table. "There's a charged atmosphere when you're asking for money," she says. "I like to share food with people, but not in a business situation." However, after showing guests the museum's collection of art by self-taught artists, she'll sometimes extend the visit to dinner and head to Mount Vernon's famed Afghan eatery, the Helmand.

Likewise, Joanne Martin, co-founder and CEO of the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, prefers to meet with potential donors at the museum—at least initially. "If we have lunch outside, the funder may not get to know what we are all about." It must be working: Martin has raised more than $14 million for the institution. When a museum tour extends to lunch, she will ask a guest where they'd like to eat. "If they're from out of town, usually they'll want crab cakes." McCormick and Schmick's and the Oceanaire are both good bets. One of her favorite spots is the Olive Grove in Linthicum; she'll take guests there even if a trip to the airport isn't involved.    

Martin, like Hoffberger, realizes that an out-of-towner's experience in town is crucial to her success. But unless the food is designed to make a statement or spark conversation, lunch itself is usually the last thing on the power lunch agenda.

Mitch Halbrich raves about the Center Club's fare, encourages the obliging waiter to bring a tasting portion of corn chowder, and then insists on the full presentation of the dessert tray. He wants to make sure I realize how good the club's food is. (It is.) He wants to make sure I say nice things about the place. (If I worked downtown and made six figures, hell, I'd join.) But the average CFO at Constellation who was, say, trying to enlist Mergis in a search for a part-time accountant (or just looking for a new job) certainly wouldn't study the menu and ask where the vegetables come from (they're local). He'd glance down, order the penne, and be done with it.

Joe Haskins agrees. "If I took you to lunch and you asked too many questions about the menu or ordered the lobster," he tells me, "I'd probably say to myself, this isn't someone I'd want to be doing business with."

—Contributing writer Martha Thomas wrote about grass-fed beef in the August Urbanite.




BALANCE OF POWER

Who's in and who's out in business dining?

"It used to be the Roost," says Tom Hall, music director of the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. "But now everybody's going to Miss Shirley's." Baltimoreans may still call it the Roost, but the restaurant at the Cross Keys Radisson changed its name to Crossroads (5100 Falls Rd.; 410-532-6900) more than a decade ago. Hall recalls breakfast meetings there with benefactor Henry Rosenberg Jr. "It was as if he was on a receiving line at a wedding. There'd be a constant stream of people stopping by the table."

The Cross Keys site still has its stalwarts—the financier Eddie Brown has breakfast meetings at Crossroads—but over the past few years, as the restaurant has endured renovations, much of the North Baltimore action has moved southeast to Miss Shirley's (513 W. Cold Spring Ln.; 410-889-5272), where Hall often runs into people from the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance, the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts, and the BMA. Even Annette Gregory, who has waited tables at the Radisson for thirty-three years, acknowledges that Miss Shirley's is the new happening place. "I saw a regular customer outside the place and went in to look around," she says. "I didn't try it, but it looked very nice."

Downtown, the vintage Art Deco booths of Werner's (231 E. Redwood St.; 410-752-3335), strategically located between Baltimore's financial district and city government, are often filled with judges and city council members. And the interior, seemingly untouched since the place opened in 1950, has been used as a set for period films. But most agree that Werner's isn't what it once was, when lunchtime lines snaked out the door.

For those who can get away with a midday cold one, there's Peter's (111 Mercer St.; 410-539-5818), a pub with an old-world feel that has been owned and operated by Peter Kimos since 1987. The 63-year-old Kimos ran as a Republican candidate for state delegate in 2006, but remains bipartisan with customers. For the lunch-in-a-rush crowd, the Downtown Deli (7 N. Calvert St.; 410-727-7715) around the corner seems to have appropriated Werner's long lines.

Brooke McDonald and Michael Brassert, who own a film production company called Houpla Inc. in the building above Werner's, have managed to combine old and new: They bought one of Werner's booths when the restaurant expanded its entry and installed it in their reception area, complete with period-correct napkin and sugar dispensers. "Our power lunch is getting sandwiches from the Downtown Deli and eating them right here," says McDonald.

—M.T.



RULES OF THE GAME

Do's and don't's for business eating

A few years ago, the president of a major university asked Eddie Brown and his wife, Sylvia, to join him for lunch at the Harbor Court. (The university was not a Maryland institution, Brown says with a chuckle, "so you can take that off the table.") When the meal was over and the check came, the president made no move whatsoever, recalls Brown, the founder and CEO of Brown Capital Management. The bill sat on the table "to the point where it was embarrassing." Finally, Brown pulled out his wallet. The putative host never said a word.

"That," Brown concludes, "was not appropriate."

On the other hand, Brown recently had lunch with a woman in the early stages of her career. When the check came, she reached for her bag. After all, she, like many African Americans entering the business world, had sought out Brown's advice. However, says Brown, "I suggested that I pay for lunch, and I'm sure she appreciated it, just as I would have when I was younger."

So, what are the rules on who pays for what? It depends, says Cynthia Lett, an etiquette and protocol expert certified through the International Society of Protocol and Etiquette Professionals. Her Silver-Spring-based company, the Lett Group, offers seminars and consulting in business etiquette for would-be Masters of the Universe learning how to lunch with authority. Etiquette, she says, is all about power: "If you know how to handle yourself, you have the power. Show that you are in control, but also that you have the personal interests of your guest at heart."

Here are some of Lett's tips for a proper power lunch:

The invitation:
The person who extends the invitation always pays. The most important first step is establishing that. Don't say, "Let's have lunch." Say, "Bob, I would like you to be my guest for lunch."

Choosing the time and place:
Always offer at least two options. For example, say, "Would Tuesday or Friday work for you?" and then ask if he or she would prefer to eat at noon or 1 p.m.

Never ask your guest where he or she would like to eat. Instead, offer a choice—one should be a place where you can get anything—sandwiches, soup, or salad. The other can be trendier.

How to order:
Once you sit down, go through the menu with your guest and introduce the options. Suggest items from a number of courses so he or she won't feel inhibited about ordering more than one item. You must match your guest's number of courses. The same goes for beverages. If your guest sticks with water, guess what? You're drinking water.

What to eat:
Sandwiches are not a good idea because the filling can squish out. Order something you can eat with a knife and fork, and nothing stringy, like spaghetti. The food is secondary: If it requires too much attention, you shouldn't have ordered it.

Conversation openers:
Be sensitive to what is appropriate. Men can talk about sports with each other, but be aware that women may not be as interested. On the other hand, asking a female about her children should be far down the road. Talk about where you grew up and places you have traveled to. Get to know the kinds of things your guest values, and then move on to ask about his or her company or how he or she got into this career.

Doggie bags:
Never.

Lipstick at the table:
Likewise.

Basic manners:
While men and women should be perceived and treated as equals, it's still appropriate (but not necessary) for a man to rise when a woman stands up or returns to her chair.

Other venues:
Breakfast: Business breakfasts are great, particularly with out-of-town guests who are staying in a hotel, or for those with difficult schedules. Breakfast should never happen before 7 a.m., and should be finished, with good-byes said, by 9:30 a.m.

Afternoon tea: Afternoon tea had a resurgence about eight to ten years ago. This isn't high tea, but it always includes food: sandwiches and something sweet. An invitation to afternoon tea will make an impression, and it can be a good excuse to leave the office early.

Rules for the buffet:
Don't fill up your plate. A buffet is designed for you to take small portions and then go back for more.
Don't comment on the way things look.
Always return the serving utensil to the proper place.
Do not eat while standing next to the buffet.

—M.T.



The Lett Group is offering a three-day seminar called "The Well-Mannered Weekend" that covers social and business etiquette as well as international protocol. A formal dinner with wine is included on Saturday night. September 19–21 at the Hilton Washington, D.C./Rockville Executive Meeting Center. For information, call 301-946-8208 or go to www.lettgroup.com.





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