In the '80's with homeless people sleeping in boxes everywhere, leaving major leftovers behind seemed criminal. I asked to have anything that looked edible packed up and would often leave shopping bags next to cardboard boxes lined up on the church stairs at Fifth and 55th.

       I recall once asking a man holding open the door at the bank with a tin cup for change if he would like something to eat. I always asked. I would never assume. "What is it?" he said.

       "Duck pasta," I said, "It's delicious."

       "No thank you," he responded waving me away. "I'm a vegetarian."

       Today, when soup kitchens have multiplied and still cannot meet the demands of the hungry, it seems wanton to leave good food behind. Now the homeless are more scattered. I don't mind if anyone thinks it's tacky. I take leftovers for myself. Chicken to slice on a salad at lunch. I wouldn't dream of leaving behind Brooklyn Diner's Chinese chicken salad - easily enough for two. Once I could not eat the second cut of wild salmon after two or three chef extras in a tasting dinner at Le Bernardin. "I'll take that home please for breakfast," I said. I did. It was sublime next morning cool on a toasted bagel.

Le Cirque By Default And By Design

       All of us were unmoved by lackluster starters one Saturday night at a two-week-old spot I hesitate to condemn on just half a meal. "Shall we move on?" I ask my companions. So the four of us decamp to Le Cirque for the $35 Cafe dinner. I had no idea it was Craig Hopson's last night as executive chef. He wandered out of the kitchen and joined us, his spirit that of an athlete with his heart already elsewhere. He would be going home to Perth with his wife and children, he said, returning to work on Brewster - finally, a room of his own - opening soon downtown in a building that once housed a horse-carriage maker.

       Upstairs in the kitchen off the private dining room, his replacement, chef Oliver Reginensi, shanghaied from Americano after less than a month in its kitchen, was feverishly working on Le Cirque's restaurant week menu. It would be his debut in the "Monkeyhouse," son Mauro confides.

       Last night we returned to taste. Sirio the ringmaster, leaning on his cane, had a full house of discount fans in the front room and was showing off his new chef draftee chosen to run Ristorante Sirio at The Pierre who had just arrived. The 39-year-old Cremona-born Filippo Gozzoli, trim and mephistophelean with his shaved head and dark muzzle of beard had an eager athletic air too, like a high-price kicker waiting for the call.

       "We're taking him to dinner at Le Bernardin," Mauro confided, slim and elegant in his close-cut Italian suit, but still sporting a black eye. (From a fall, he said.) "We're showing him New York."  

       I had chef Reginensi's slow cooked egg with sweetbreads, practically a rerun of his Americano egg, and his chicken Diablo, both annoyingly salty. The first-rate apple crumble and the gift of a mignardises plate (I ate everything chocolate) restored my good mood.