Dear Friends and Family,

        Surely New York City is emerging from its swoon. Last week was just irrational exuberance all over again. The town fairly vibrated with ambition and ego. Fashion's Big Night Out shook even me out of my paralyzing frugality. I bought a sheer wool fluted skirt and it wasn't even on sale. I have actually been considering it might be time to change my nail polish from the Military Red of the last 20 years to a fashionably new weird violet just so when people gasp, I can echo The NY Times Ruth La Perla who wrote so definitively on nail color: "Picking the right nail polish shade separates the terminally clueless from the cognoscenti."

        Editor Barbara Fairchild invited Steven and I to lunch with a few pals at Bon Appetit's Popup Cafe in Avery Fisher Hall, where needless to say we didn't have to wrestle for our table.

        There would be lines out the door if it were a permanent whimsy. And so cheap! Sandwiches $10 or less.  Cookies $2 and $3. We shared Missy Robbin's ricotta-prosciutto-roasted fig on ciabatta, then Steven went back for a second all his own while I tasted Laurent Tourondel's lobster roll and Emeril Lagasse's roast turkey panini.

        Barbara, luxuriating in the café's success, insisted everyone taste the pumpkin whoopie pie - it was unreasonably delicious - and sent us home with a Yucatan shredded steak salad by Rick Bayless and four kinds of cookies, bagging the whole deal herself. I am shocked now hearing she is off the masthead at Bon Appetit after 32 years, ten as editor in chief. She never let on.

        Fashion howled. Patina Group's new Lincoln did previews in its glam glass house across from Alice Tully Hall. Film fans lined up. Feels like revival to me.

        I desperately needed a Hampton fix after too much summer in an urban steam bath. Friends picked me up at the East Hampton jitney stop and we went directly to Round Swamp Farm for a strawberry rhubarb pie - crust better than usual, rhubarb feistily tart. I even had some on my yogurt for breakfast Saturday morning, telling myself calories don't count if you eat standing up.

        By managing to arrive five minutes before lunch ends at West Lake Clam and Chowder House we got a table where there can be a 45-minute wait since Zagat gave this little waterside joint a blowsy "24" rating. It's cheap and sweet, family run, with a tranquilizing view of the bay and boats putt-putting around. The Manhattan clam chowder was duller than dishwater but I happily slurped up half a dozen raw clams ($7), sipped ice tea and asked for extra mayo for my respectably fresh lobster roll.

        I was curious to see what Cascabel Taqueria partner Todd Mitgang was doing at South Edison in Montauk. I liked his lush lobster roll - fat chunks, carefully cooked, with black garlic mayonnaise and raw fennel ribbons - more than my hosts, year-round residents who hang out often in Montauk where the real is not yet fatally eroded by chic. But all of us were impressed with his thick corn soup, carefully fried rock shrimp to drag through bacon fat aioli, and the sheep's milk cavatelli with heirloom tomato ragu.

        Chef Mitgang wasn't sure when the place would close for the season. Maybe soon. Maybe after Columbus Day. My friends urged him to stay open for four-day weeks through Christmas. Then Fran asked the waiter for a piece of paper to wrap up the unfinished half of her big almond cookie. "I'll do better than that," cried the charming Denver, taking the cookie remnant to the kitchen and returning with a large square box and a shopping bag. I tipped extra thinking he'd given her a fresh cookie but, no. There, in enough wrap to make a dent in the rainforest, was a half-eaten cookie.

        Addicted as I am to the essentials of fast food - salt, grease and sugar - there was not much dignity in my lust to be first in the door at Hill Country Chicken. The wattage was blinding and I hesitated, worried my turquoise eye-liner might be excessive, but no one noticed.  The line to pick up food at the serving counter doubled around and back right up to the door. Marc Glosserman, a businessman who dared bring Texas barbecue to Manhattan successfully at Hill Country BBQ had saved us a table downstairs [full disclosure]. We'd brought friends from Paris, still jet lagged, but eager to explore le fried chicken - dark meat eaters all four of us. For my tips on what you want to eat with your bird and why you need to grab the pie you want when you see it, click here. 1123 Broadway at 25th Street.

        In Paris they call September the retour, when toutes breeze home from August out of town and the city comes alive again. That's what I was feeling two weeks ago at Jean Georges. The noisy windup to a new season. But it was also that precious moment when a tomato can still astonish, corn remains sweet in its short Byronic life and fruit begs to be eaten quickly. After a blistering summer, it even felt cool. I was lunching with a longtime associate with whom my ties have always been proper. But in the shared rapturous discovery of firm, perfectly-cooked shrimp with flutters of celery leaves and the alchemy created by a voluptuous dose of peach paired with horseradish, I was already feeling a new intimacy. Jean Georges at lunch is like that. The room, filling up at 12:30, has a buzz of contentment, tables turning, business plotters, Asian tourists, ladies who lunch. At just $29.50 for two courses, most book far ahead and people are still arriving at 2:30. Click here to read what we ate that had me crying out ecstatically and my more sedate friend exclaiming.
1 Central Park West.

        I have longed to return to The Breslin ever since a first gloriously excessive dinner, but I've been given my arteries six months time to recover. My friend Naomi and I arrive at two, strolling past empty tables, but the host insists we wait in the bar till he can seat us. The de rigeuer snub. I would have had him killed but fortunately he "found" a table in less than five minutes. The Caesar is gorgeous, a couturier ball gown on a plate, long crisp leaves of the best romaine, only the perfect leaves, with millions of small indentations to catch the dressing, tangy from lemon and who knows what. It sits on frilly shreds of parmesan studded with anchovy flavored crisp croutons and deep fried herbs. "This is the best Caesar I've had in a long time," says Naomi. "Maybe the best in ten years."

        "What Caesar was that ten years ago?" I ask.

        She considers.  We finally agree we cannot remember a Caesar ever this splendid. The corn soup is a miracle too - in a month of corn soups, cold and hot, too sweet and cruelly violated, the corn is brilliantly balanced against the tang of tomato and chili heat with tangles of cilantro. I imagine I taste lemon or lime or even vinegar. Granted the ham sandwich is just so-so, almost prissy, the meat cut so thin it seems shredded. And the seafood sausage is a dud compared to the seafood sausage we two remember at Taillevent or as recreated by André Soltner at Lutèce. It's ground so fine you wouldn't know it was sea-anything. And as Naomi observes, kinder than I, "It's a kindergarten buerre blanc." Broken down on the plate, not the satin buttery pool we expected.

        Dessert arrives in twin glasses. The caramel of the currant-topped syllabub sticks to the glass but the peach trifle with buttermilk gelato is deliciously satisfying. It's so rare that the two of us sneak away from our desks for lunch. Luxuriating in April Bloomfield's signature excess at Breslin, we vow to be more wanton from now on. 20 West 29th Street between 5th Avenue and Broadway.

        Since I fell victim to the ridiculous Twitter obsession and picked up 38,000 or so followers, whatever that means, people send me goodies. There were two astonishing waves of caviar last winter and now, this summer, ice cream. Most sorbets are too sweet for me. And I don't stock up on ice cream in my freezer - I have more than my share of dessert every night as a restaurant critic. Steven keeps us supplied with Ben & Jerry's Cherry Garcia Yogurt in case of a natural disaster or terrorist attack.  

        But I said yes to Talenti of Dallas, Texas, send your stuff. I'm pleased to report Talenti does properly tangy Blood Orange and Roman Raspberry sorbet. I finished the Peach Champagne sorbetto all by myself one Sunday night while watching "Hung." And the gelatos are exceptional, dense and full of intense flavor. I tried to get my assistant to join me but it seems I finished the double chocolate, loaded with small shards of chocolate, all by myself. The pistachio is disappearing fast and I find myself distracted by idle thoughts of dulce de leche. I'm told Talenti frozen desserts are sold in NYC at Whole Foods and Garden of Eden.