♦ The 2009 Michelin guide will hit bookstores tomorrow. Masa has moved up to three stars, joining Per Se, Jean Georges and Le Bernardin. And Momofuku Ko, Adour Alain Ducasse, and Gilt were all added to the two-star list. [NYT]
♦ David Burke is opening up a fish bar called Fishtail David Burke on East 62nd Street. He's also changing the name of restaurant he co-owned with Donatella Arpaia, david burke & donatella, to david burke townhouse. [Zagat]
♦ Anthony Bourdain's two favorite dive bars? Holland Bar and the Distinguished Wakamba Lounge, in case you feel stalking him. [Page Six Mag]

♦ And some have suggested that no one wants to ring the closing bell these days? Bobby Flay turned up at the NASDAQ this afternoon to handle the honors as part of the promo campaign for the New York City Wine & Food Festival. [Eater]
♦ A first look at Chloe on Ludlow Street. [GS]
♦ Recession special! The five-course game dinner at Daniel is $495 per person. [Zagat]
♦ Comfort food: It's what's for dinner. [NYDN]
♦ Anthony Bourdain's fantasy party? A barbie with Marco Pierre White and Keith Richards, among others. [P6]
♦ A look inside the new Magnolia Bakery in Rockefeller Center. [Eater]

♦ Frank Bruni has a few words of advice on what to do if a waiter serves you the wrong dish. [NYT]
♦ Sam Mason has a new bar planned for a space adjacent to Tailor. [GS]
♦ A look inside Aspen Social Club, the Steve Lewis-designed restaurant/bar at the newly-opened Stay hotel. [GofaG]
♦ Anthony Martignetti is opening a "private club without the membership policy" called Southside. [GS]
♦ Drew Nieporent's Corton opened last night in the space that was formerly occupied by Montrachet. [Eater]

Admit it. You've been wondering what John McCain eats for breakfast. The answer? Coffee, cereal, and fruit. (No, not babies.) Barack Obama gobbles down four to six eggs, potatoes, and wheat toast, and occasionally adds fruit, bacon, and oatmeal to the menu. (How does he stay so thin?) We certainly didn't see this one coming, but Tom Brokaw says he's a granola and yogurt kind-of-guy. Maureen Dowd? "I don't eat breakfast. Just coffee." A few other breakfast choices of media and political types after the jump.

Oh good, more attack ads! Not in politics—in the cutthroat world of soup. As we newly poor Americans gather our last remaining pennies from our decimated retirement accounts, hitchhike to the grocery store, and head for the soup aisle to ponder what watery concoction can best momentarily quiet our growling bellies, marketers are more determined than ever to ensure you pick their cheap concoction above their competitors'. So they're running ads savaging rivals like Progresso and McDonald's who are just wrong for America:

♦ Convivio earned a three-star review in the Times today; chef Michael White, says Frank Bruni, "can do it all." [NYT]
♦ Armin Amiri's plans for Cafe Socialista? He says he's turning it into an "exclusive" 24-hour diner. [NYO]
♦ Jean-Georges Vongerichten's next project is a restaurant in the Mark Hotel. [Page 6]
♦ Amy Sacco just renovated Bungalow 8, but whether that's enough to bring back her A-list clientele is still up for debate. [NYO, GofaG]
♦ Chef Paul Liebrandt chats about his new restaurant, Corton, which he's opening with Drew Nieporent. [Metromix]
♦ Le Parker Meridian is opening a new bar called Knave. [NYT]
♦ JE Englebert, the publicity-seeking owner Prime and Suzie Wong, says he's starting a group called New Yorkers Against Bottle Service. [GS]

♦ Complain about the economy all you want but Thomas Keller has no plans to lower prices at Per Se. [GS]
♦ The early reviews are mixed for Five Leaves, the Williamsburg restaurant that Heath Ledger was planning to open before his death. [Eater]
♦ Django, the Mediterranean restaurant on 46th and Lex, is closing this Thursday. [Eater]
♦ A list of who's cooking what at the NYC Wine & Food Fest's Grand Tasting event on October 11th. [Metromix]
♦ There's no zebra on the menu at Braai, the South African barbecue restaurant in Hell's Kitchen, but that's only one of many disappointments for Danyelle Freeman. [NYDN]
♦ More complaints about Gael Greene's list of New York's most important restaurants. [Serious Eats]

Celebrity chef Tom "Tom" Colicchio, of Top Chef fame, is going to be back in the kitchen, cooking food! Not for you, of course—for 80 lucky people per month who score reservations to his crazy new momentary pop-up restaurant. Which is really just an idea of a restaurant, existing only in the minds of those who can pay $250 to eat... something that Tom Colicchio decides to cook. Could be anything! Let's break down this brilliant new way to soak rich foodies in these lean, Kool-Aid times: See, Colicchio's not actually opening a new restaurant; he's starting a venture called "Tom: Tuesday Dinner" that will open up every other Tuesday, then disappear! The first exotic location for your pricey meal? A "tiny space" in the private dining room of Craft, another one of his already existing restaurants!

It looks like a celebrity chef has plans to start cooking again. Tom Colicchio announced the launch of Tom: Tuesday Dinner this morning—he says he's willing to change the name "if someone can think of a better one"—which will have him cooking for Craft's private dining room every other Tuesday night beginning October 14th. The seven-to-eight-course menu (ranging in price from $150 to $250) will be posted on the restaurant's website a week in advance. Alas, his website doesn't seem to be functional just yet, but interested diners might want to use the phone instead (212-400-6495), especially since Colicchio says he only plans to keep the project going for the next year.

Yesterday we learned that our national diet is shifting towards cheap, simple meals like tomato soup and Kool-Aid because of the national economic meltdown. But that doesn't mean your tomato-Kool-Aid soup must be boring and plain! Publishers are flooding the market with a new crop of food magazines, just in time for our collective shift from a nation of gourmet snobs to a nation of bony, coupon-clipping scavengers. 2008 saw the publication of 336 food magazines, up by a third from only five years ago. That's probably way more than necessary! Bad move? Here's a market summary: Interest is up. News stand sales and web traffic are both up. But! Ad pages are down. Several big food magazines have already seen double-digit drops in ad pages. And outside industries like travel and home furnishings that advertise in some food magazines are also hurting, and buying fewer ads. So what are publishers doing? Tying new magazines to celebrity chefs, or to the Food Network. Paula Deen! Sandra Lee! Rachael Ray! All big successes, or predicted to be! Other, more mundane cooking titles will surely fall by the wayside over the next year. The future of American food publishing: "Rachael Ray Tells You How To Use Lard To Re-Fry Your McDonalds Burgers To Raise Your Family's Caloric Intake Above Minimal Survival Levels." Mmmm! [WSJ]

♦ Tom Colicchio is opening two more 'wichcraft locations in Midtown. [GS]
♦ Despite an appearance on Kitchen Nightmares last week, Black Pearl on West 26th Street has closed its doors. [Eater]
♦ An update on the UWS branch of Shake Shack, which remains under construction. [Eater]
♦ Not only is Daniel Boulud not worried about the recession, he also happens to be opening a new restaurant called Secession. [WSJ]

Now that the wizards of Wall Street have destroyed all hope for your future economic security, it's time to start eating like a pauper! That's the new ad strategy that our nation's largest food companies are pursuing, reasoning that the fancy Pepperidge Farm cookies and "vegetables" are going to be the first thing that shoppers slash from their budgets in these lean times. Why not try some grilled cheese and tomato soup? Shiny apples for a nickel! But this nutritional depression has an upside: Hey, Kool-Aid! Among the products that are getting a new marketing push since the financial apocalypse: Cereal, soup, milk, and "single serve frozen dinners." Don't forget the ramen noodles and berries foraged from the forest! And also:

♦ It's only been a few months since it opened, but Sheridan Square has already closed. [Eater]
♦ Hand over $50 to the Obama campaign and you can watch the debate at The Box tonight. [NYP]
♦ Taavo Somer and Ken Friedman on cutting out half the menu at the Rusty Knot. [DBTH]
♦ There are actually bars in the city that serve $1 beers, believe it or not. [Metromix]
♦ The new Trader Joe's in Brooklyn is open! [Brooklyn Paper, Racked]

Eater has the skinny on Anita Lo's Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, which launched its first "dumpling truck" in Midtown yesterday. It seems the mobile dumpling dispenser turned up on Wall and William Streets today. The message on the chalkboard? "Don't Jump Eat Dumplings!" [Eater]

♦ Is Frank Bruni leaving the Times? Possibly, although he says he's not. [Eater]
♦ Eli Zabar has slapped an "energy surcharge" on all purchases at Eli's and some customers aren't happy about it. [NYT]
♦ A look inside Citrine, the new Flatiron club opening in late October. [DBTH]
♦ Now there are two Spitzers down for the count. The Department of Health has shuttered Spitzer's Corner, the LES bar/restaurant. [Bowery Boogie via Eater]
♦ Pork nut/amateur psychic David Chang says in the future we'll make do with less meat and eat more veggies. [Esquire via GS]
♦ Meet the five finalists in the annual Vendy Awards, which celebrates the city's finest food carts. [GS]

♦ Sasha Petraske's Mercury Dime won't be serving alcohol (it was denied a liquor license yet again last night), although Petraske is hoping to rebound by turning Milk & Honey into a "private social club." [Eater]
♦ Cocktail king Dale DeGroff is working with Marriott to create cocktails for the hotel chain. [NYT]
♦ Philippe's new West Village offshoot, Philippe Chow Express, is now equipped with touch-screen kiosks. [NYT]
♦ Guest of Guest's map of where the cool kids hang out. [GoaG]
♦ Le Cirque has dumped its à la carte menu. [Zagat]
♦ Steve Lewis corresponds with his old pal Michael Alig. [BB]
♦ A cooking lesson courtesy of Wylie Dufresne. [GS]
♦ Laura Bush clearly has no interest in what Frank Bruni thinks. She turned up at Michael's for lunch today. [MB]

♦ Frank Bruni doesn't give Delicatessen in SoHo any stars, but he's pretty pleased with those famous cheeseburger spring rolls. [NYT]
♦ New York's Adam Platt can't get over Sheridan Square's "bland" decor (which he likens to the interior of an airport hotel), but the food earns the spot a star. [NYM]

Media heiress and urban prose stylist Emily Brill used to be overweight, which is worse than cancer. She heroically slimmed down, and is now compelled to weigh in, ha, on weighty public health issues. So when she saw a week-old Times story about the decline of calorie-counting, she could not conscientiously keep quiet! "Mind if I add my two cents?" she writes. "I did manage to lose some weight over the past year or two..."

♦ A look at the restaurants inside JetBlue's new terminal at JFK. [Eater]
♦ Masaharu Morimoto explains why why Wagyu beef is so special. [GS]
♦ Photos of Archipelago, the new Japanese-French restaurant by Hisanobu scheduled to open on Monday. [GS]
♦ Don't get too excited about a Sam Talbot restaurant in Chelsea just yet. [Eater]
♦ A sneak peak at the Trader Joe's in Brooklyn. [Urbanite]
♦ Hearst and MSN launched new food site today called Delish.com. [PRN]
♦ Martha Stewart's staff tasted the 14 best hot dogs they could get their hands on. Nine of them hailed from New York. [Martha Stewart]

This probably isn't the news that enviromentalists wanted to hear: After an embarrassing investigation turned up evidence that the London branch of Nobu was serving endangered bluefin tuna, Nobu's general manager Richie Notar (left) now says the sushi chain will list which dishes contain the endangered species on the menu. It will be up to customers to "decide whether to order the fish despite environmental qualms, or to choose a 'greener' alternative." Why not take bluefin off the menu entirely? Notar says that was what he wanted to do, but "the move was being resisted by the chain's Japanese chefs." (And you never go up against a sushi chef, especially if he has a knife in his hand.) Just in case you're wondering if this means that Nobu might add other endangered species to the menu with a similar disclaimer, you needn't worry. "Mr. Notar said he would not serve chimpanzee and tiger meat, because it was illegal, but while bluefin remained legal, there was a "ludicrous situation" where some said it was unethical to serve it but Japanese fishmongers said it was a well regulated trade. "I would love to see a law because then there is no grey area." [Telegraph UK]