Ladies Who Power Lunch - NYTimes.com Karsten Moran for The New York Times At ABC Kitchen, Satya Twena, center, a hat designer, with her employees at discoverpique.com, Valeria Segal, left, and Alex McLean. If Tom Wolfe were to write a novel about power, style and status in New York City at this moment in the 21st century, there is one restaurant dish he might have to build a whole scene around, to convey the right tang of anthropological exactitude. It's the roasted carrot and avocado salad at ABC Kitchen, with its beguiling layers of spices, sprinkled seeds and crème fraîche. It's a virtuously healthful dish, even though it tastes luxurious, and Tina Bhojwani has devoured it during more business lunches than she can count. "It's my favorite," said Ms. Bhojwani, an executive who oversees international development for the clothing brand Theory. I always eat that. A salad may seem modest, but that dish (and its cult following among trend-attuned New Yorkers like Ms. Bhojwani) is emblematic of a shift in the way that women participate in the crucial information-gathering and idea-generating ritual known as lunch. Wander into ABC Kitchen on any given weekday and the nature of that transformation will be abundantly clear: There's a new generation of power-lunch spots in downtown Manhattan, and women are the most devoted regulars. For culinary, aesthetic and economic reasons, some of the most influential editors, fashion designers, filmmakers, actresses, media executives and thought leaders in the city can reliably be found at a sisterhood of restaurants scattered in and around Greenwich Village and TriBeCa, NoHo and SoHo. Don't make the mistake of referring to these midday regulars as a new breed of "the ladies who lunch," an echo of the Babe Paleys and Pat Buckleys, expertly coifed and even more expertly married to rich men, who once commanded hangouts like Le Cirque and La Côte Basque. For most of the current habitués of ABC Kitchen and Buvette, the Smile and Café Cluny, Rosemary's and Lafayette, lunch has nothing to do with lingering for hours among the leisure class, comparing Bill Blass suits and sharing gossip with the catty likes of Truman Capote. These are women who work, and the places where they choose to network and hammer out deals are a conscious reflection of their professional strategy. "Lunch is always about business for me," said Laura Michalchyshyn, the president of Sundance Productions and a regular at a rotation of downtown spots that includes Hudson Clearwater, Café Cluny, Morandi, the Dutch and EN Japanese Brasserie. There's a bit of a charge about going to a really great restaurant and having a terrific meal and doing business over lunch. It would be another mistake to expect the same kind of vibe associated with the city's more traditional power spots. If an institution like the Four Seasons represents the archetype of the New York corner-office clubhouse - it's in Midtown, primarily presided over by a portrait gallery of male machers from Washington and the Fortune 500, and as carefully orchestrated as a royal processional at Versailles - then ABC Kitchen qualifies as its looser, female-friendly downtown counterpart. "It has its Four Seasons power-lunch vibe," said Dan Kluger, the executive chef of ABC Kitchen, but if you just happened to stumble in, you might not necessarily notice. That appears to be part of the appeal for many working women (and men, too). "Where you go to have lunch has to be on brand with your brand," said Carrie Rosten, a consultant for media companies and magazines - as much a signal of your sensibility as the shoes you wear. She added: "You're not going to some Midtown spectacle of a place. Because that's not cool. That's a different thing. The move downtown depends, in part, on jobs. A business lunch naturally tends to happen where the business is, and media-oriented enterprises have been migrating for a while now to the neighborhoods south of Midtown and north of the financial district. So if it sometimes seems as though there is a kale salad on every block, that's because there is probably a fashion house, a tech start-up or a boutique advertising agency on every block, too. And don't forget Google. "Fifteen years ago, we would've been somewhere else," said Gail Simmons, the "Top Chef" series judge and special projects director for Food & Wine magazine. She has an office in Midtown, but has made enough repeat trips to ABC Kitchen, on East 18th Street, that Mr. Kluger has been known to tease her about it. "We all are eating differently - the same way that we are dressing differently for the office," Ms. Simmons said. Personally I don't want to go to a very formal steakhouse for lunch every day. My lunch standards have changed. So has the statement that is made by the power meal: it's a deliberately subtle, farm-to-table message now, as opposed to a deliberately booming, beefy, Ned-Beatty-in-"Network" one. "While they have incredible food and a great aesthetic, the snob factor is not there," said the fashion designer Rebecca Minkoff, an ABC Kitchen regular. I'm drawn to these more eclectic places. I don't want to feel like I'm lucky for being let in. Along with shucking off the hauteur, many of these new magnets have dispensed with the expectation that the elite will get concierge treatment.