Food plants generally require fairly strong light and are tricky to grow indoors, though many people on this forum do so successfully. I've used a Metal Halide Agrosun bulb, which is quite bright and has a broad enough spectrum to be usable for flowering as well as vegetative growth. Mine is hung about a foot below a 9' ceiling, with the plants in trays on a table beneath. I lined a room divider with reflective material to conserve light (and because the light is too bright to look at directly).

Here's a guide to growing indoors and some lighting options.

I'm not sure a setup like this will be well-suited for your entry way, though, since visitors will see either a very bright, industrial-looking plant light or a mysterious glowing room divider. HID lights are also bright enough to bleach paint, wallpaper, or paintings over time.

Be aware that your electricity cost will exceed the value of the food you can grow. For the same reason, indoor growing of common garden plants may not suit your idea of "eco-friendliness."

You may wish to go with a lower-wattage setup, or make use of natural light even if it's dim, and grow ordinary houseplants that are adapted to low light and warm, dry conditions.

Thank you for the follow up information. I may have to rethink this whole thing.

Perhaps I could get away with say a lime tree, which satisfies my 'food' concept, but may survive ok in the corner with a regular light bulb above.

A regular light bulb will not keep any plant alive, let alone a lime tree. If you want to grow anything there and have it live, you need serious grow lights, especially if you want something growing there that provides food. And in order to do that successfully, as nygardner said, you need a setup that will be rather unsightly, especially for the front entrance to the house. A good setup with grow lights is the kind of thing that looks like it belongs in the basement or the garage.

really excellent light both for growing and esthetics, is the uni-form pulse start lamp from Venture. it is available in a wide range of wattages to suit your requirement, except that they are not available in most retail stores. i order mine from plantlightinghydroponics in indiana, but i'm not sure if they ship to toronto. for toronto garden, i would look into OVERDRIVEN t8 lamps. i use a ballast designed for two eight foot tubes, and use it to drive two two foot tubes - this makes the lighting very bright, but from a height of nine feet, i would prefer to use some HID lamp, like the venture product.