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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 4, 1993                   TAG: 9304020274
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KATHLEEN WILSON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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LUNCH-DRINKERS FOUND TO BE A RARE SPECIES

At some point - long before anyone around here claims to remember - there was something commonly referred to as the "three martini lunch."

This alcoholic triple play was thought of as American as drinking beer at baseball games and Mom's apple brandy. And the joke used to be that places that didn't serve alcohol wouldn't serve many business executives.

All of this was long before fitness and health became fashionable. Today, the emphasis in restaurants is on heart-smart foods such as chicken, fish and pasta. Today the salad bar is likely to be more popular than the other bar, at least at lunch.

Now it's virtually impossible to find anyone who so much as takes a sip of wine with lunch.

"If I drank at lunch, I'd be ruined for the day. Dragging," said Bill Thomason of The Packett Group, a Roanoke advertising agency.

"I've never had one in my life," said Joseph Stephenson, president of Shenandoah Life Insurance Co., of the martini lunch.

He has a theory about it, though. "I think it's a figment of the imaginations of people who live in places like New York, Chicago and San Francisco."

Linda Williams of Billy's Ritz and Bridget Meagher of Alexander's, owners of two downtown Roanoke restaurants, say that for anyone to drink at lunch around here is rare.

Rare, but not unheard of.

"We do have one person I can think of who really enjoys a three martini lunch," admitted Linda Fisher of the Jefferson Club.

But she's not telling who.

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