It was probably the surprisingly balmy evening that got me feeling very "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay." The outdoor tables at King were almost full. Inside, the doors were flung open to a rather bucolic village mood on the edge of Soho. Something about the reach for majesty in the interior pleased me. It borrowed from baronial vintage West End Avenue lobbies. And the waiter in the fedora with the casual style was clearly a professional. I'd never heard of chef Francis Derby and I was instantly on guard when his menu offerings took on airs more science lab than dinner.

       Then came that amazing clam and mussel stew under thick toasted country bread slathered with sublime rouille. I gave the place a measured rave in BITE. When I questioned chef Derby on Sunday about the menu, he somehow forgot to mention he'd walked out two days earlier, when his kitchen reign was about to end anyway.  As he finally confessed Monday, after my blog was activated for all to read, "They kept talking about a new menu and it clearly wasn't going to be mine."

       We quickly attached a caveat to my King blog.  But that's how I found out something was shifting in the Denton Brothers empire, because the smoothy in the fedora was Joe Denton.  Yes, the Dentons split.  Brother Jason got the empire. Joe got a buyout and was talking about a fresh start in Brisbane, Australia, where his wife and child were already living.  I know there's more to this story but I couldn't tease it out from either brother. If you're trying King, you're on your own. 5 King Street between Sixth Avenue and Houston. 212 255 0700.

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Faux Spring at Telepan  

and went on to become a world-tripping mixologist consultant. Lively, passionate, opinionated, determined to prove you can create a great drink from almost any fruit or vegetable and spirit or two, he confided he lived not far from us (although he was rarely home) and he loved Telepan.

       That's where we met last week, facing a spectacular mural of asparagus.Recently, Bill Telepan has been getting rave reviews for his dedication to Wellness in the Schools. But before that, before he got his first look at what his daughter's school cafeteria was feeding her, I'd met friends for a summer lunch and discovered his remarkable finesse with vegetables. That day I tasted three variations on corn.

       This week he confessed that the early arrival of spring-like weather had knocked him for a loop. Normally he would still be focusing on root vegetables, sunchokes, cabbage and Brussels sprouts.  It was the weekend when Passover and Easter collided. He sent out a special amuse  of a smoked trout potato latke, chopped liver with a small matzoh flag and a dollop of dried fruit chutney salad, his charoses representing the mortar used by Jewish slaves to build the storehouses of Egypt.  I found the vegetable-bread soup tame, but was wild about celeriac in mustard seed crust with escarole flan and white beans.  I can't think of another chef who would even dream it. And as his mixologist fan promised, the chef's signature house-smoked brook trout on a buckwheat-potato blini was a thrill to speed my heart rate. 72 West 69th Street. 212 580-4300.

       Are you an April Bloomfield sycophant?  Have you been hungering for her cookbook?  If you're not quite sure, not totally committed, as I have been, to this woman's totally over-the-top maniacally piggy overdrive at The Breslin, you'll know when you see the cover of "A Girl and Her Pig" (Ecco 29.99).  That is April, too shy to emerge from the kitchen, plain un-made-up face, hair pulled back, a baby pig slung over her shoulders. It's for you or it isn't. You could heed Jamie Oliver, "This chick cooks like a ninja, and now she's giving you all of her secrets - what are you waiting for?" 

      That's the point. If you had hoped for more about Bloomfield, early angst, erotic confessions, a soupçon of kitchen confidential. Apparently scarily demanding in the kitchen, she drives everyone, even herself, for a perfection she cannot reach, says her ghost, J.J.Goode. But she does tell you what you need to know about lemons, and salt-packed anchovies, her obsessiveness about tomato ripeness. She doesn't like shelling peas so she buys them frozen for the green pea and ham soup she resurrects (from the "chilly day when dad was being stingy with the heat").  Did you know you have a choice of keeping the soup green or not?  No fooling, no deviation, no pretension.