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• Vong closes tomorrow. Moving in is Wolfgang's Steakhouse. [JGV via Eater]
• Mario Batali says he decided to change up Del Posto because he's planning to get a second Michelin star and a four-star Times review this year. [TONY]
• Rumor has it Scott Conant may take over the Table 8 space. [Eater]
• The Mermaid Inn team open the Mermaid Oyster Bar next week. [GS]
• MePa's Los Dados seems to have morphed into a sports bar. [Eater]
• The food cart hype was bound to lead to something like the lunch shelf. [SE]
• It's a pain when a restaurant screws up a dish, sure. But it's no reason to threaten your waiter with a knife. Unless you want to go to jail, that is. [NYP]
• Condé Nast is now swinging into damage control mode: It's retained Michael Sheehan, a "crisis manager and media coach" who's faced some steep PR challenges in the past having worked with President Clinton and AIG. [NYP]
• So is Oprah moving to cable? The discussions continue, reportedly. [AdAge]
• Kyle Pope doesn't seem to have been Jared Kushner's first choice to serve as editor-in-chief of the New York Observer. Times star business reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin turned Kushner down twice over the past year. [NYM]
• More than 100 people were laid off at Lifetime and A&E today. [Variety]
• Philip Gourevitch is stepping down as editor of The Paris Review. [NYO]
• Time Warner chief Jeff Bewkes discusses the future of the media biz. [TDB]
• MTV did not rebuild the Berlin Wall for U2, in case you were worried. [UPI]
Former supermodel Stephanie Seymour and newsprint mogul Peter Brant are in the middle of a very messy divorce at the moment. Neither side has spoken out about their imploded marriage, since Seymour and Brant signed an agreement barring them from discussing the feud publicly. But presumably Brant and Seymour's lawyers didn't address the subject of sexy photos, which explains why the December issue of Vanity Fair features a collection of half-nude photos of the 41-year-old ex-model by Mario Testino. (Brant will get a spread of his own in the January issue, we imagine.) More
Citigroup Was One Big Mistake | If you're a Citigroup shareholder and you've watched your investment in the bank tumble into the abyss over the past year, take heart. John Reed, the man partly responsible for creating the dysfunctional financial supermarket that Citigroup turned into by merging Citicorp with Sandy Weill's Travelers Group in 1998, is really, really sorry. "We learn from our mistakes," says Reed. Feel better now? [Bloomberg]
Apple Will Not Be Defied by Overeager Upper West Siders | Apple has set a date for the opening of its new outlet on the Upper West Side. The doors of the massive, three-floor store will open to the public a week from tomorrow at 10am sharp. "Until then, forget about sneaking a peek behind the capacious crimson curtain hiding its innards. The Mac-istas have the front door here seriously secured." [Racked]
Flu Flap | Did you hear that a handful of large Wall Street banks have been getting the swine flu vaccine to give to their "high-risk" employees, even though area hospitals have yet to receive it or are now running low on their supplies? A little public pressure seems to be paying off. Morgan Stanley says it will return its 1,000 doses to the city health department since some hospitals are still without the vaccine. But not every firm is following suit. Goldman Sachs is still "more important than you are," reports the Wall Street Journal. But you'd probably figured that out already. [WSJ]
World Series MVP Hideki Matsui celebrated the Yankees win at today's tickertape parade. And while we have no idea if plans to keep the party going this evening, he probably should know that no less than 100 lovely ladies are going to be waiting for him on West 33rd Street tonight, including "Suki" (right) who happens to be fluent in Japanese. Oh, and Hideki's wife is invited, too, naturally.More
The Hygienic Terrorist | Remember Najibullah Zazi, the coffee cart vendor from Queens who was arrested in September for conspiring to bomb targets using homemade chemical weapons? As dangerous as he may have been with explosives in his possession, it turns out he wasn't much of a threat when it came to coffee and donuts. City inspection records indicate he only received six tickets between December 2004 and May 2008, "a tally that industry representatives say is impressively low." We knew there had to be a silver lining somewhere! [NYT]
Anna Goes Pizza-Less | Staffers at Vogue did not celebrate Anna Wintour's 60th birthday earlier this week. According to Voguette Lauren Santo Domingo, Anna was in Washington getting "knighted" by President Obama. (She was actually appointed to the White House Committee on the Arts and Humanities along with 24 other media people, but why quibble?) Which is too bad since—shockingly—she says staff birthdays at Vogue are typically celebrated with "pizza parties and cupcake parties." [The Cut]
Spotted | Tyra Banks shopping in the West Village with a Gucci fanny pack around her waist ... Sienna Miller walking her dog (and picking up after her, too) ... Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen leaving an office building in Midtown ... Anna Paquin arriving on the set of The Romantics on Long Island ... Katie Holmes carrying coffee on Long Island ... Regis Philbin walking on the Upper West Side ... 50 Cent leaving the PIX11 Morning News studios ... Shia LaBeouf filming scenes for Wall Street 2 on the Upper West Side ... Edie Falco taking a break while filming Nurse Jackie ... and Glee star Cory Monteith leaving dinner at Southern Hospitality.
Paterson's 'Hail Mary' | And here we were thinking that the end of the 2009 election cycle meant we wouldn't have to see any annoying campaign commercials until at least the fall of 2010. New York's gubernatorial elections are a full year away, but Gov. David Paterson is "making the highly unusual move" of airing two new commercials beginning tomorrow in the hopes of boosting his low approval numbers. We can't see how the two spots are going to do much to salvage his political fortunes. But you can have a look at the two commercials here and decide for yourself. [NYDN]
• Paolo Pellegrini, the white-hot hedge fund manager who started his own firm last year after working for billionaire John Paulson, has closed on the purchase of a 3,500-square-foot apartment at 88 Central Park West. Pellegrini and his wife Henrietta paid $9 million for the co-op, down from the $10.995 million asking price that owners Ray Errol Fox and Jean Thomas were seeking. The apartment was first listed in May 2008 for $12.995 million. [Cityfile, Stribling]
• Victoria's Secret president Ed Razek has sold his UES pied-à-terre. Razek sold his one-bedroom co-op at 32 East 64th Street for $2.25 million. [Cityfile]
• Deborah Doyle McWhinney, who was appointed as the head of Citi's Personal Wealth Management division this spring, has picked up a new apartment. McWhinney paid $2.88 million for a co-op at 25 East 86th Street. [Cityfile]
Recession Not Quite Over, After All | The U.S. unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent in October, which is the highest it's been in 26 years. [NYT]
Happy Birthday | Ethan Hawke turns 39 today. Mike Nichols, the film director and husband of Diane Sawyer, is turning 78. Gossip Girl's Kelly Rutherford is 41. The First Lady of California, Maria Shriver, is 54. Sally Field is turning 62. Writer Michael Cunningham is 57. Rebecca Romijn (formerly Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) turns 37 today. Thandie Newton is turning 37. Taryn Manning is 31. Actress Emma Stone is 21. TV host Catherine Crier is turning 55. Former Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger is turning 69. Joe Wilson, the former diplomat and husband of Valerie Plame, is 60 And Lamar Odom, the NBA star and poor soul now married to Khloe Kardashian, is 30. A few weekend birthdays after the jump.
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