Host Kathy Griffin, channeling Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys. (Check out a brief clip of her show opening performance here.)

Top Chef contingent (+ Project Runway Season 1 winner Jay McCarroll):

Project Runway Season 4 winner (and new Brooklynite) Christian Siriano and Tim Gunn. So we meet again!:

Molly Sims:

A bizarrely loopy Lauren Hutton (more on this later — wow) and Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi:

Tyson Beckford and Saturday Night Live alum Rachel Dratch:

Stylist and future Bravo reality star Rachel Zoe and Tim Gunn:

A-List Actor (Female) winner, Dana Delaney (Desperate Housewives):

Anna Sui, winner for “A-List Fashion,” presented to a fashion designer who has proven to be a tried and true trendsetter and tastemaker. Sui beat out Tory Burch, Zac Posen and Proenza Schouler(!)

Despite the clunkiness of the execution, this was probably my favorite segment: the Quick Fire competition between Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio and “A-List Chef” winner Jose Andres. They each whipped up two dishes — on stage — which host Kathy Griffin “dropped” before reaching the panel of TC alum judges.

Real Housewives face off!

To close out the awards ceremony, there was a charity fashion show (benefiting UNICEF) featuring “celebrities” strutting outfits designed for them by Project Runway alums: Candace Bushnell and season 2 designer Daniel Franco, Holly Kiser and season 4 finalist Chris March, Kathy Griffin and season 2 designer Nick Verreos, Katrina Smirnoff and season 3 finalist and “Fan Favorite” Michael Knight, Kat Von D and season 4 finalist Sweet P, Niki Taylor and season 3 finalist Laura Bennett, Nikki Blonsky and season 3 designer Malan Breton, Rebecca Budig and season 3 designer Alison Kelly.

I crossed paths with the touring trio on Sixth Avenue, as they were heading into the MoMA to take advantage of Target Free Friday Nights when museum admission is complimentary from 4–8PM. All other times, it’s a rather steep $20, which explains this insane queue for entry.

So despite the fact that my MoMA membership card would earn me line-jumping privileges, I knew that every single one of these people would make it inside the museum eventually, and I didn’t particularly want to be there when they did. Not when I could check out the acclaimed “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibit any other time… through May 12, anyway.

I met up with SYB, MB and JA a couple of hours later at Amazing 66, where we gave our visitors an authentic taste of Chinatown. Tonight’s menu overlapped much of the Mardi Gras meal -– with the short rib-stuffed pumpkin and steamed whole flounder the unqualified hits of the night — but in the excitement of feasting, I neglected to order the “Salad Walnut Prawns” — sorry, HYB! Afterwards, the nine of us made the obligatory post-dinner visit to the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory around the corner.

After the couples took their leave, it was up to the B brothers and me to plan out the rest of our evening. The night was still young, but, as it turned out, so were our guests; JA was a couple weeks shy of her 21st birthday, which strictly limited our options. Three native New Yorkers, and not one of us could immediately think of a place to spend a Friday night that did not involve drinking, or that at least required guests to be of drinking age. Embarrassing, actually – and a testament to how very long it had been since any of us had to take such matters into consideration.

I remembered what fun we’d had at J’s birthday celebration in December, and suggested Fat Cat Billiards on Christopher, both for its live music and its low-key vibe. Under 21 welcome! The $3 cover got us into the basement saloon, stocked with pool and ping pong tables, shufflepuck and foosball (“baby-foot” in France, I learned), chess and board games galore. The women, though, seemed most entranced by the live performances, and the well-over-21 among us were more than happy to settle into the worn couches for the next couple of hours to catch the sets by The Gospel Queens of Brooklyn and one very talented jazz octet.

This year’s festival featured a week-long engagement of Poor Boy’s Game, directed by Clément Virgo and co-written with Nova Scotian writer/director Chaz Thorne. The film premiered at the 2007 Berlin International Film Festival and was selected later that year for inclusion at the Toronto Film Festival. It stars Rossif Sutherland, the 6′5″ dark eyed, half-brother of Kiefer and son of Donald.

Sutherland plays Donnie Rose, a brooding young man recently released from prison, where he has served nine years for a brutal beating that left a black teenager handicapped for life. Nine years later, Donnie is a changed man, but his gritty, racial tension-filled surroundings in Halifax remain much the same. Sparked by the desire to settle old scores, a local boxing champ from the black community (Flex Alexander) arranges a grudge-match with Donnie. And although it’s clear that the intent is bloody vengeance, Donnie accepts the challenge and the $20,000 payment to fight. The victim’s father (Danny Glover), moved by a desire to overcome the violence of his and Donnie’s shared past, forms a tortured and unlikely alliance with the ex-con, leading up to a climactic showdown in the ring.

I’ve seen my share of mass destruction on film, but something about boxing movies always makes me cringe behind my fingers.

After dinner, we did some date location scouting in Midtown — no, not for me — passing Elmo along the way.

I’d been intrigued by Kyotofu, the Hell’s Kitchen branch of a Kyoto dessert bar and cafe chain, since it opened in October 2006, touting Japanese-inspired, homemade tofu-rich desserts. New York magazine called Kyotofu “a magnet most nights for dainty, delicate females and chirpy, dessert-nibbling aesthetes of the opposite sex,” which described the clientele inside architect Hiro Tsuruta’s mod, white jewel box of a dining room pretty accurately. We settled into stools around the front bar, in full view of the glass enclosed kitchen, to sample two desserts from chef Ritsuko Yamaguchi’s menu of sweet and stylish tofu, fruit, green tea, chocolate and sesame creations. (The cafe also features an extensive cocktail and beverage list, light savory bites, and on occasion, Sunday tea service.)

The Tofu Cheese Cake, topped with candied ginger, was wonderfully airy with a hint of tanginess, but I loved Kyotofu’s “Signature Sweet Tofu,” served with a shallow boat of kuromitsu black sugar syrup, candied apricot and a crispy black sesame tuile. The silken texture was reminiscent of the Chinese doufu fa, but creamier, with just the right amount of sweetness. Ed Levine called the dessert “strangely beguiling.”

Downtown location coming this summer.

The extraordinarily well-loved, family-owned Virginia-based chain of Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries arrived in New York City last year — the East Coast’s answer to In-N-Out — opening branches in College Point and Brooklyn Heights. In early November, the first Manhattan outlet opened on 55th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues; the company plans to open 29(!) more in the borough over the next eight years. (That’s a lot, but nowhere near Starbucks’ level of ubiquity. But I digress…) By their second day of business, midtown lunch crowds had pushed waits for burgers and fries to an hour and half. Oh, what New Yorkers will endure for a good burger! Or good pizza!

At just past 7PM on a Monday, though, it is a decidedly less chaotic scene.

J had visited the Queens location before — they have a MySpace page! — but this was my first time sampling the famous burgers. Each one is made to order, and Five Guys provides all the shelled peanuts you can eat to tide you over while you’re waiting for your order number to be called.

The corporate policy is to cook all beef patties to well done — eek! — in spite of which the burgers do retain a surprising level of juiciness. Usual toppings include lettuce, tomato, pickles, fried onions, sautéed mushrooms, ketchup, mustard and mayo; other less standard fixins include relish, jalapeño peppers, and green peppers, and all are included in the price. I ordered what’s listed on the menu as the “little hamburger,” which didn’t seem so “little” to me; roughly the same size as the ones at nearby Burger Joint, and at $2.00 less, a much better value. (The standard Five Guys burger comes with two 3.3 ounce patties, stacked one atop the other.) Five Guys fries are hand-cut, skin-on affairs. $4.50 for a large order (plain or cajun) seemed disproportionately expensive — a quarter more than my burger was, even — but are very generously proportioned; we essentially received double what we expected: inside our grease-stained brown paper bag was a tall styrofoam cup brimming full of fries, with roughly the same amount thrown in loose over our foil-wrapped burgers. Easily more fries than we could finish in a single sitting — and I love fries. Nice touch: bottles of malt vinegar on the tables. Goofy touch: announcing the provenance of the potatoes on a whiteboard by the registers. (“Today’s potatoes are from Ririe, Idaho.”)

Peter Meehan of The New York Times had good things to say about those fries in his assessment of the Brooklyn branch (“Generously portioned… with an honest potato flavor”), but was less impressed with the burgers themselves, declaring them “not particularly salty or griddle-charred or beefy.” New York magazine was more effusive in its praise, recently naming Five Guys among the city’s best burgers; theirs was just one more article mounted along a long wall lined with glowing write-ups.

Non-press folks love them, too.