♦ Restaurants are adjusting to the economy by lowering prices and offering coupons. Coupons? Things are worse than we imagined. [NYM]
♦ A handy map of the bars on Bowery. [DBTH]
♦ An armed robber stole $7,000 from Dylan Lauren's Dylan's Candy Bar this weekend. [NYDN]
♦ Rocco DiSpirito is happy to talk about the chicken minestrone he's downing by the quart to get ready for Dancing with the Stars. He's a little less eager to talk about his "primping regimen." [TONY]
♦ Cain is either shutting down this Friday or just closing temporarily for renovations. [DBTH]
♦ Sam Talbot may move from Montauk to his own restaurant in Chelsea in the near future. [Bottomless Dish via GS]

♦ Ten places to feed your midnight cravings, including the usual suspects like Blue Ribbon and the Spotted Pig . [NYO]
♦ Jean-Georges isn't the only restaurateur who landed in hot water for skimming tips: A roundup of the dozen or so big-name venues that have faced similar legal trouble over the past year. [Reuters]
♦ The Food Network is looking for a "young, irreverent chef" with a "Yoga-like ability" to host a new show. [Eater]
♦ Frank Bruni offers up his take on Williamsburg's Marlow & Sons. [NYT]
♦ Sweet & Vicious is back in business. [Eater]
♦ Lucky Cheng's might be leaving the East Village for a new spot in Times Square. [GNML via DBTH]
♦ A peek at the new menu at Grayz. [GS]

♦ Nightlife impresario Noah Tepperberg (left) says bottle sales at Marquee have slipped 10 percent this quarter. [GS]
♦ Jean-Georges Vongerichten is paying $1.75 million to settle a lawsuit brought by waiters over skimmed tips at his restaurants. [Reuters]
♦ Todd English's Libertine opened inside Jason Pomeranc's Gild Hall hotel last night. [NYO]
♦ The city's best restaurants are in Hell's Kitchen; the best bars are in the East Village. At least that's what Time Out says. [TONY]
♦ Now that Dessert Studio has closed, Will Goldfarb is planning a move to Bali. [NRN via GS]
♦ Armed robbers are targeting Starbucks locations. [NY1 via Eater]
♦ JE Englebert, the owner of Suzie Wong and Prime, may sue the developers of the Gramercy Starck building on East 23rd Street because he doesn't like the small emanating from the McDonald's on the ground floor. [NYP]

♦ A very modest Daniel Boulud says his restaurant on the Bowery will be "the greatest diner on earth." [NYP]
♦ Serge Becker's new Swiss restaurant, Cafe Select, is finally open to the public, albeit only for lunch for the moment. [Eater]
♦ Frank Bruni says he doesn't understand the concept of bottle service. This might have something to do with the fact that he's 43. [NYT]
♦ Apparently you can find some decent food in Little Italy. [Metromix]
♦ Photos from Little Italy's festival of San Gennaro. [GoaG]
♦ Marco Pierre White thinks fellow Brit chef Gordon Ramsay is boring and only interested in money. [NY Sun]
♦ A round-up of the best bagels in New York. [VV via Eater]
♦ Alaskans really do eat moose meat. They serve it as steak, make it into hamburger meat, and even use it as a pizza topping. Yum. [NYT]

♦ Frank Bruni of the Times heads to Brooklyn to pay a visit to James and awards ths spot one star for "sophisticated" food that locavores can "feel especially virtuous about." [NYT]
♦ The Daily News' Danyelle Freeman takes on Allegretti this week, giving the "upscale, yet accessible" resto three out of five stars. [NYDN]
♦ TONY's Jay Cheshes isn't a fan of the Sheridan Square. The food is inconsistent and the place lacks personality, according to Cheshes, which explains why he gives it two stars out of six. [TONY]
♦ Paul Adams of the Sun hits up Sheridan Square, too, although he prefers chef Franklin Becker's food ("exceptional") much more than the service. [NY Sun]

♦ Does the financial meltdown mean the end of bottle service in New York? [DBTH, Gawker, GNML]
♦ A new study shows that Food Network hosts are pretty lousy at following food safety guidelines; Paula Deen, FYI, is the worst. [Super Chef via Eater]
♦ Death & Co.'s David Kaplan has gone to court to stop his building's landlord from evicting the bar over noise violations. [NYO]
♦ Anthony Bourdain enjoys eating "bootleg foods" like "illegal cheese." [Gothamist]
♦ Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern eats rancid cheese and fermented animal parts for a living and yet says he's never gotten sick on the job. [amNY]
♦ A new food magazine called Swallow is launching next month. [GS]
♦ Trader Joe's is opening its first Brooklyn outpost next Friday. [BP]

Le Cirque owner Sirio Maccioni isn't very happy with Adam Tihany, the restaurant design maestro who crafted the look of Maccioni's own eateries but then "betrayed" him by coming up with the new look of arch-enemy Daniel Boulud's Daniel. "Adam Tihany will never do anything for me again," he starts off with Gael Greene. "Adam did five restaurants for me. He was always six months late and two million over budget... I should have 10% cent of everything Adam earns." [Insatiable Critic via Gothamist]

Frank Bruni's takedown of Michael's last week is the gift that keeps on giving. Following up on his interview with the Observer yesterday, today David Patrick Columbia offers up a few more thoughts on the media hotspot on New York Social Diary, sharing a few details on his eating habits, because you know that's what you've been waiting for: "I am not a gourmand although I have a large and ongoing appetite. However, unless something is giving me attitude when I'm eating it, I tend to like what I am eating when ordered in a restaurant. Occasionally at one restaurant or another, I’ll have something that speaks to me, sings to me, but otherwise I am not persnickety. I rarely go to a restaurant for the food, but for the company." And there you have it. [NYSD]

• Julian Niccolini will begin serving breakfast at the Four Seasons. You'll have to wait until January, though, to pay $44 for a croissant. [NYM]

• Daniel Boulud chats about the re-opening of Daniel on Monday (photos here) and explains why he shouldn't be held responsible if you get fat from eating too much of his food. [HuffPo via GS]

It's a good thing Times dining critic Frank Bruni reviews food for a living, which only relies on his sense of taste and not his eyesight. The photo that accompanied his takedown of power lunch spot Michael's yesterday included quite the collection of moguls in the background, not that Bruni—or anyone else at the Times—seemed to notice. In the audio interview that accompanied the review, Bruni says that the eatery "seems to draw in particularly large measure from the publishing, literary and journalistic worlds. You know, you might see someone like Graydon Carter there. Apparently, you do see some celebrities there. I didn't spot them, but maybe I just missed them as I was hustled to Siberia." Carter isn't much of a Michael's devotee, actually, but perhaps Bruni should have taken a closer look at the picture that accompanied his review.

• It seems The Box's Simon Hammerstein is quite the pervy, depraved boss, at least judging by all the complaints from female ex-employees. [Gawker]

The ultimate confluence of a prestige media restaurant reviewer and prestige media restaurant has finally occurred: Frank Bruni has reviewed Michael's for the Times. At this point we should skip all the background, because those who don't appreciate the import of this moment will never be invited to Michael's anyhow. Suffice it to say that the city's most famous critic visited its most famous media power lunch spot, and, in a blinding flash of meta-media honesty, declared that it sucks big time:

• Frank Bruni visits media mogul central, Michael's, and hands the restaurant the zero-star review it fully deserves ("gloppy, affected pub grub") although he points out that the food there "isn't really the point," which is true, too. [NYT]

• George Gurley's brilliant survey of the social scenesters you'll find hanging out at the Beatrice Inn. [Gawker]

• New York's Adam Platt visits Convivio and gives Michael White's kitchen three stars. [NYM]

The Food Network is starting a magazine with Hearst. It will be poetically named Food Network Magazine, and it will feature Food Network people and Food Network food. Appropriately, NBC's weight loss spectacle The Biggest Loser is also cranking out new books and promotions for Rodale magazines Prevention and Men's Health. And Starbucks has decided to start distributing an in-store version of money-losing do-gooder magazine Good. Reading in America: It doesn't happen unless food is involved. [Super Squats says drink your milk.]

• Inside The Libertine (left), Todd English's latest venture, which will open next week in Jason Pomeranc's Gild Hall hotel. [Eater]

We always knew that using our brains too much was a bad idea—frowning causes wrinkles, for one thing—but now there's research to prove it. A study has demonstrated that not only does thinking barely burn any more calories than resting, but carrying out intellectual tasks triggers significantly greater hunger. "Caloric overcompensation following intellectual work," says the study's lead researcher, "could contribute to the obesity epidemic currently observed in industrialized countries." Finally, an explanation for all those obese people who turn up for the all-you-can-eat special at Red Lobster. The problem isn't that they were just handed a plate of 43 jumbo shrimp. It's they they just finished intellectually-demanding tasks like economics research and neurosurgery, so it's only natural that they're hungry.

• Frank Bruni of the Times heads to Elizabeth and bestows a single star on the restaurant that has seen two chefs come and go in recent months: "It has its problems, annoyances and confusions. Just four months old, it has already changed plenty, and it still doesn’t seem entirely sure of what it wants to be." [NYT]