Power lunch: the great outdoors: take your lunch to the extreme.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra
• Position: Alaska Business Power Lunch

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Last month we took you to places where the scenery enhanced your lunch meeting. Now that warmth and light have flowed back into our daily lives, get out of the restaurant entirely and into the scenery itself. Let's dine alfresco.

Alaska has a wide selection of places to eat in the sun. Tucked into alleyways, high in the air, right on the sidewalk, along a river, on the edge of a lake or overlooking a harbor, they offer the opportunity to watch people and Alaska.

Go Outside in Anchorage

For a big splash, take off to the shore of Lake Hood in Anchorage and the terrace of the Fancy Moose at the Millenium Hotel. The busiest floatplane dock in the world, Lake Hood Seaplane base, is nearby as is the hotel's floatplane dock on Lake Spenard--right next to the patio in fact. You and your guest can see DeHavilland Otters and Beavers, the workhorses of Alaska, land and take off. Maybe you have a wild Alaska tale about flying in one--that's sure to be a conversation icebreaker.

Continue down Spenard to Fireweed Lane and to the Greek Corner for a Mediterranean meal under an umbrella at a table on the restaurant's whitewashed patio. On a bright summer day, you'd think you were on the island of Mykonos or Santorini, with its bleached stucco houses and walkways.

Wander through the menu for some classic Greek delicacies like pastisio, the Mediterranean answer to macaroni and cheese or moussaka, an eggplant dish made famous in the movie "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" where it was linked to our own favorite ungulate, the moose.

Unfortunately, the glassed-in roof terrace of the Top of the World Restaurant on top the Hilton Hotel in downtown Anchorage is closed for renovations for the rest of the season, according to management. The glass windbreak allows for a 180-degree view of Cook Inlet, Mount Susitna and the Port of Anchorage and beyond to Denali--that is, when the mountain decides to come out of the clouds.

In Anchorage, Boston Gourmet Pizza Restaurant and Sports Bar has an expansive patio outside, and while it does front on W. Benson Boulevard., it is well protected from the dust with glassed-in sides--and best of all, it faces south. The menu is Italian specialities and gourmet pizza, but true-blue all-American also is well presented and, of course, Alaska seafood like salmon and halibut.

Behind Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse on Sixth Avenue in downtown Anchorage there is a patio behind on the back alley. Humpy's mission is to provide...