• "If there's a restaurant out there that you love, visit it. Eat there. Especially if it's in the two-star or three-star category, where I sense some of the greatest vulnerability of all," advises a very sensible Frank Bruni today. [NYT]
• On a less serious (and more creative) note, Bruni manages to slap Charles with a zero-star review and poke fun at Graydon Carter in today's Times. [NYT]
• Mayahuel, the new tequila bar by Death & Co's Phil Ward, opens in May. [UD]
• Gordon Ramsay at the London may not be around for much longer. [TFB]
• Todd English's rep has confirmed he's out at the Libertine. [GS]
• It's Pera that is planning to take over the Bar Martignetti space. [Eater]
• Fast food has reinvented itself and is now cool again, just so you know. [NYP]

• Ian Schrager is bringing in some firepower to the Gramercy Park Hotel: Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality will take over space formerly occupied by Wakiya, and David Rockwell will handle the design, although the "Italian-inspired" restaurant doesn't have a chef or name just yet. [NYT]
• In a chat with the Observer, Meyer says he's "intrigued by the possibilities" of working with Schrager. He also says he has no plans to take over the Rainbow Room, and remains undecided about a bid for Tavern on the Green. [NYO]
• Rumor has it Todd English is out at The Libertine at the Gild Hall hotel. [TFB]
• Keith McNally's Minetta Tavern has added a late-night menu. [GS]
• A group of sad Beatrice Inn regulars gathered at the Cooper Square Hotel on Friday night. In attendance: one-half of the Olsen twins, Chloe Sevigny, and "some skinny guys with mustaches," naturally. [DBTH]
• The sandwich shop Crosby Connection opened on Bleecker today. [Eater]
• The best street food in NYC, at least according to the Post. [NYP]

• The Cutting Room is hoping to re-open on Franklin Street. [Eater]
• Anthony Martignetti says he plans to close and revamp Bar Martignetti. [GS]
• Frank Bruni gives a single star to Cabrito in his Times review today, subtracting points for the eatery's "maddening" inconsistencies. [NYT]
• More on the "21" Club's decision to end its 79-year tie requirement. [NYT]
• John Doherty is stepping down as the Waldorf-Astoria's exec chef. [NRN]
• Keith McNally chats with the Observer about Morandi, Minetta Tavern, and the "pizzeria with a twist" he plans to open a year from now or so. [NYO]
• Are Wall Streeters really eating at McDonald's to save on food? Maybe! [NYP]
• Health commissioner Thomas Frieden's latest target? Salt! [NYT]

Socialgay Kristian Laliberte, who does the PR for fledgling label Unruly Heir, had promised us "more of a presentation than a show, with models walking down the runway to inhabit tableaus vivant, or living painting." What this meant: models, dressed in preppie clothes but carrying props such as a croquet mallet, or a ghetto blaster boombox, or a hobo's hankie-on-stick thing, walked down the runway, posed at the end of it it, and then walked over to the side and pretended to "tag" a painting that was pretending to be a fancy painting by spritzing it lightly with pastel spraypaint. One of them threw a tennis ball into the audience! Another walked with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. It was all very badass, very Port Authority meets Palm Beach. Or: very Dalton meets Once I Saw 'Paris Is Burning.' The inimitable Laurel Ptak documented it for posterity.

Sometimes two mysterious and crappy things that seem like they should be related actually are. This is great, since it reduces two crappy things into just one. For instance! The gutting sense of wonder at why the "hottest celebrity hangout" is actually the upstairs of a cruddy Soho cafe was somewhat eroded by today's revelation that the owners of "Upstairs" (as Cafe Bari is called) are the swarthy brothers Martignetti. Les freres Martignetti are the proprietors of the eponymous Bar Martignetti, which is to pink-shirted preppy dickheads what an empty parking lot by I-95 is to day laborers: A place to gather and drink and await desperately-needed attention. With that, the fog of mystery dissipates, leaving only the stench of knowledge in its place.

They're tall. They think that pink, kelly, and cordovan are primary colors. They pluralize the word "philanthropy" and still insist that Trinity and Haverford are prestigious colleges. And now, after decades of wining, dining, and murdering at lame-not-lamé Upper East Side haunts like Dorrian's Red Hand, the preppies are massing downtown! All thanks to Bar Martignetti (say: "Netti") on Broome Street — founded by an eponymous set of Mario-and-Luigi brothers (profiled in the Observer last summer) — where the usual Houston hauteur has been replaced by I'm-okay-you're-okay Dalton-Horace Mann rapprochement. Allen Salkin, Christiane Amanpour of Sunday Styles, reports from the frontlines.

In a New Yorker review of Bar Martignetti (which we'd previously nominated as our inaugural Douchebag Restaurants Hall of Fame entrant), we couldn't help but notice how they'd perfectly encapsulated not just the restaurant, but all Manhattan twentysomething douchebags.

Remember when we made fun of Thrillist for reporting the joyous news that new brasserie Bar Martignetti wouldn't boot you "even if you're the last man not passed out in his Sierra Nevada?" A tipster reports that a visit to B. M. last night confirmed our initial suspicion: it's a douchebar.