Beverly Hills at Lunch

Beverly Hills conducts its real business at lunch, and the midday table is the town's true theater, the famous hotel patios seating their regulars under the same umbrellas at the same hour, the power booths of the old grills holding reservations that pass down like memberships, and the industry conducting its courtships over salads negotiated as carefully as the contracts they precede. For the visitor, lunch is also the practical masterstroke, the town's grandest rooms at their most accessible prices and their most watchable hour.

The canon divides by register. The hotel patios run the classic performance, banana-leaf wallpaper or garden trellis, the famous salads chopped tableside, the people-watching conducted over sunglasses at professional standard, and the correct visitor booking is one patio lunch taken long and unapologetically, per the money logic of these pages, which buys the full five-star theater for the price of an entree and iced tea. The old-guard grills and delis carry the second register, red leather, matzo ball soup, waiters of forty years' tenure, where the industry's working tier actually eats, and the newer cafes of the little vias run the espresso-and-shopping circuit at European pace.

The rituals reward observation. The booth geography of the famous rooms is real and readable, the regulars' orders never touch the menu, the tableside preparations, salads, guacamole, the occasional flambé, survive here as living theater, and the valet ballet outside runs continuously like a title sequence. The town's evening tables are covered by its other pieces. Lunch is when the machinery shows its gears, politely, daily, from noon to two.

Book the one patio lunch ahead, arrive at noon sharp when the room fills, and order the famous salad where the salad is famous. Take the second lunch at a grill counter for the contrast, which is the fuller education. The town performs its old script all day, per its founding piece in these pages, but the matinee, served chopped, dressed, and under umbrellas, has the best seats, and they are, at lunch prices, briefly available to anyone.