Ladies who like to lunch in style like to lunch at M Café & Bar. It's in Chevy Chase where one side of Wisconsin Avenue is still rooted in medical centers, gloomy estate jewelers and the Gap while the other glistens with outposts of Jimmy Choo, Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Bulgari, Dior, Ralph Lauren and other brave adventurers from New York.

M Café & Bar is a rare, in Washington, taste of Manhattan glamour. There's a backlit wall of amber glass, soaring ceilings, minimalist design, a touch of Europe. Somehow you imagine the conversation is more likely to cover the kind of behavior that Mother wouldn't approve of than the lastest news from the PTA.

Diners are mostly women 'd'un certain age' as might be expected from its location behind and through the Max Mara boutique. (If you are under 35 and buying anything from Max Mara to wear outside of the board room, put the clothes in storage for a decade and rethink your wardrobe. You are missing out on fun.) It's a lunching place they dress up for. Don't plan on donning your denim dirndle and tennis shoes.

The menu is clever. It has greenery that goes beyond the Ls-Who-L Caesar Salad staple, like aragula with pears, walnuts and blue cheese, and mixed leaves drapped with prosciutto and shavings of Parmesan. There are feminine meat dishes like vitello tonnato, and for the young or the men accompanying the Ls-Who-L, there are pizzas. (Have you ever seen a Lady Who Lunches tuck into pizza?)

Desserts are even more clever - jewel-like patisseries filled with fresh berries or lemon or chocolate so tiny they barely count in the calorie calculation. You could have two without anxiety. Not all succeed, though. Dried figs and cherries in syrup, a fresh strawberry - radish-like in texture and flavor - decorate the pannacotta, perhaps to distract from the breast implant consistency of what should be a trembling creamy mold.

It's no surprise the owner Iraklis Karabassis is a partner in Café Milano and owns several Benettons and Max Maras, including the one fronting the M Café & Bar. He's doing his best to tap your inner Euro glitterati-ness.

M Café & Bar, 5471 Wisconsin Avenue, Chevy Chase, MD, 301 986 4818.

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