This study intends to identify the ways in which eating may express social habits. Kilo restaurants downtown Rio de Janeiro show the daily lunch time and its various seasonings: time, money, surprising mixtures, tradition and modernity. The eating ritual, with its traditional and new patterns, is analyzed in light of the distinction between the home and the street and also taking the concept of mundialization into account. Such concept indicates that cultural values related to tradition and modernity coexist and overlap. Other sociological and anthropological references are ingredients also used to capture how cultural values that are apparently conflicting mingle at lunch time, as demonstrated by words, gestures and feelings towards eating. This research indicates that lunch time has become much more than eating time; similarly, the choice of food is related to elements that extend well beyond financial aspects, convenience or those related to gender and class criteria. This type of restaurant reveals a new type of social locus where Brazilian social values and identity traits are also on display.