Dominique Strauss-Kahn ate here, on West 52nd Street,Â with his daughter on May 14, soon after leaving his Midtown hotel. Less than an hour earlier, prosecutors charged, he had sexually attacked a hotel housekeeper. Lawyers are seeking security tapes from the restaurant that might show Mr. Strauss-Kahn.  A street fair had shut down a stretch of Avenue of the Americas between his Midtown hotel and the restaurant where he was due for lunch. Stuck in traffic, he called his daughter, Camille, from a taxi to tell her he was on his way; she should go ahead and order for him, he said. Once he arrived, they had fish and shared a chilled bottle of white wine.  The lunch that Saturday afternoon, in a wood-paneled seafood restaurant eight blocks from his hotel, began less than an hour after what prosecutors have charged was his sexual attack on a 32-year-old Guinean housekeeper who came to clean his suite. The account of the meal — its timing, its description and the events that immediately preceded it — is based on interviews with people briefed on an investigation undertaken on behalf of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers.  But many of the details of what has been uncovered by the Police Department and the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., which is prosecuting the case, have been closely held, and officials in both offices would not confirm or deny the account’s general outlines or the details.  The lunch, which lasted about 90 minutes, one of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said at his bail hearing, could figure prominently in the case, which has already cost him his post as the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and his status as a leading contender for the French presidency.  Indeed, if one of several security cameras visible in the large restaurant captured the pair, the images of father and daughter in McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurant, less than an hour after the encounter with the housekeeper, could serve as powerful circumstantial evidence. It could bolster the defense case if they laugh or appear to share a leisurely meal; it could support the prosecution if it shows the 62-year-old white-haired Frenchman looking distracted or upset.  Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers, William W. Taylor III and Benjamin Brafman, have sought from prosecutors any video recordings, including anything from the restaurant on West 52nd Street near Avenue of the Americas, the New York outpost of a nationwide chain. (The choice, perhaps incongruous for a man renting a town house listed for $50,000 a month, was made by his daughter, according to the person familiar with the defense inquiry.)  But it is unclear whether the police and prosecutors have any recordings from the restaurant, and, if they do, what they show. Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, and Erin M. Duggan, the chief spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office, would not discuss the issue. Tori Harms, a spokeswoman for the restaurant company, which is based in Portland, Ore., would not answer questions about the matter, saying in a statement that “it is always our policy to cooperate fully with law enforcement authorities when matters or investigations involve our company” and that the company does not “discuss publicly details about any restaurant guest without his or her consent.”  What seems clear, however, is that along with the details of the encounter on May 14 — prosecutors say Mr. Strauss-Kahn ripped the woman’s panty hose, tried to rape her and forced her to perform oral sex, while his lawyers say there is no evidence of force and suggest that any sex was consensual — both sides have focused on events later that day.  At issue are Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s movements in the hours between the incident, which prosecutors say occurred around noon, and when police detectives from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey lured him from his first-class seat on Air France Flight 23 at 4:40 p.m., minutes before it was to depart Kennedy Airport for Paris.  While few details have been made public, a picture of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s afternoon has begun to emerge from interviews with people briefed on the defense inquiry and through court records filed in the case.  Mr. Strauss-Kahn checked out of his suite, Room 2806 at the Sofitel on West 44th Street near Avenue of the Americas, at 12:28 p.m., according to a bail application filed on his behalf.
If cameras show Dominique Strauss-Kahn relaxed, they may bolster contentions that he did not attack a housekeeper an hour earlier.