The week leading up to Christmas is when thinking people reclaim the lunch "hour". It's in quotes because the level of celebration you deserve may take considerably longer than 60 minutes, and may even involve lying phone calls back to your workplace about the need for sudden, urgent dental treatment.

Another pointer: when I go out with my friends, we all hurl our credit cards into the ring at the meal's conclusion and don't worry too much about who ate what. If your mates aren't of like mind, it's safer to pick somewhere that offers a set menu; seething resentment is the last thing you need at Christmas.

By the way, reserve now. That's what the phone numbers are for.

Chef J.C. Poirier at Chow (3121 Granville Street, 604-608-2469) offers a three-course prix fixe ($30) weekday lunchtimes until December 21. There's a choice of starters: butternut squash soup with cheddar cheese and rosemary-and-chorizo oil; terrine; salad; or (this gets my motor revving) grilled calamari with curried lentils and oven-roasted tomatoes. For mains, you've got mushroom risotto, succulent B.C. albacore tuna, pork belly, or overnight-cooked short ribs. Desserts include affogato, that happy marriage of ice cream and espresso, and a lemon tart with warm honey and lemon-thyme milk foam.

Over at Aurora Bistro (2420 Main Street, 604-873-9944), you can do a set lunch for $25 weekdays till December 31. Unctuous Sloping Hills pork shows up in a pâté starter, and as a schnitzel main with smoked paprika potato purée and mustard slaw. I'm a big fan of white salmon, so I'd likely go for that. As for dessert, you might as well surf into 2008 on a massive wave of calories via sticky toffee pudding with burnt caramel and whipped crème fraîche. Eat, drink, and be greedy, for tomorrow you diet.

Moving away from prix fixes, one of the many new places that blazed into Gastown this past year, Cobre (52 Powell Street, 604-669-2396) is open for lunch daily through December (including that slop-around week between Christmas and New Year's). The Spanglish menu is rife with tempting nuevo Latino cuisine, with dishes ranging from soup ($8) to wild Mexican sea prawns with yellow corn arepas and pipian verde (round maize bread and green sauce; $15).

Let's be honest. Some restaurants are sigh-in-the-sky for normal budgets, so you'd better book a table right this second at C Restaurant (1600 Howe Street, 604-681-1164) because until December 21, weekday lunches only, you can order anything off the dinner menu for half the price. And that includes the chef's 10-course tasting extravaganza, which normally costs $130, but now ta-da, red balloons, shiny car-dealer bunting costs $65. Stick with à la carte (and steer clear of foie gras and butter-poached lobster) and starters run $8.50 and under, with mains down to sub $20 bistro pricing. I think I'll start with the salmon cake with spot prawns, cukes, and thyme mayonnaise, and then move on to the Fraser Valley duck.

My money's on the hottest seats in the pre-Christmas run-up being at Yew, the swish new eatery/bar/see-and-be-seen place that opened earlier this week at the Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver (791 West Georgia Street). Well, you'd be glamorous too if someone spent $4 million on you. There's a raw bar for oysters and other denizens of the deep, a vast bar for drinky-poos, ottoman seats, a massive sandstone fireplace, open kitchen, communal table, wood and stone in profusion it's quintessential urban West Coast, and so is the menu. At lunchtime you're looking at upmarket sandwiches like grilled snapper, jicama, and avocado on spiced flatbread ($16), starters such as venison cobb salad with quail egg, blue cheese, and wilted bacon ($19), and mains like truffled macaroni and cheese ($18). Provided you have two of them, every wine on the list is available by the glass.

Otherwise, if you're tooling around downtown, Culinaria (609 Granville Street, 604-639-2055) sets out a holiday lunch buffet until December 21 for a modest $14.95. Students of the Art Institute of Vancouver's culinary program are roasting hams and turkeys; peeling, chopping, sautéing, and mashing loads of veggies; and baking pumpkin and walnut pies. Also keeping a sensible rein on the budget is wine or beer for $5 to $6.

Tudoresque beams, lakeside setting: it's like a manor house at Little-Puddlecombe-on-the-Whatnot. Similar in ambiance to a traditional English Christmas, Hart House Restaurant (6664 Deer Lake Avenue, Burnaby, 604-298-4278) has a Dickens luncheon buffet ($32) planned weekdays till December 21. Can't you just see Bob Cratchit tucking into a chilled seafood platter and tomato and bocconcini salad with balsamic syrup before he gets stuck into the ham and turkey? God bless us, every one.