Lately, dining out in Manhattan has been feeling a lot like dining in a high school cafeteria. The seats at the popular table are filled with everyone who is anyone, and unless you have Daddy’s Porsche or are cheer captain, you’ll never get to sit. Which is why it has been so difficult to round up my friends for a proper meal in this city. Suggest a reservation, and you’ll receive reservations. “What a headache,” one friend, a spunky PR princess purported. “It’s too expensive to eat anywhere these days, if you can even get a reservation at a good place ... it’s like a fucking aristocracy.” No doubt the economic downturn has affected many of my comrades' fun-funds, making the all-important New York dinner an endangered species. Our "industry" has peer-pressured us into thinking that the only bite worth eating is one we can barely afford, so how do you convince the industry folk that cheap eats can be chic eats?

"This seems like one big Republican party," an unnamed guest with a distinct southern accent noted last night at The Gates. "Either that or it's a Yale reunion." Amid all of this week's summery soirees, I was most happy to find myself at UNICEF's Next Generation Launch Event. With Jenna Bush Hager as a committee chair, Grey Goose-sponsored cocktails, and Josh Madden playing DJ, this one particularly disinterested party guest could not sour the bunch -- regardless if the bunch was made up of Republican Yalies or not. The event was hosted by the members of UNICEF's Next Generation Steering Committee, a group composed 30 thirty young scenesters, including Barbara Bush, Lauren Bush, Maggie Betts, and David Lauren, who banded together to party for their very first initiative: Project Sprinkles, as they pledged to raise $175,000 for the program. Not to worry -- the program isn't raising awareness for your Crumbs habit, though the delicious cupcakes were passed at the event. These sprinkles are sugar-free and save lives.

Bouncer-cum door legend King doesn't like rejecting people at the velvet ropes, but explains why some nights his own sister won't make the cut, while a dude in a blue whale suit breezes inside.

Point of Origin: The first nightclub I ever worked at was The Building. It was a second job, I was already working during the day as a bartender, and I wanted extra money. A friend of mine was dating a guy much too old for her who was managing the club, and through her I got the job. They actually got married, so I guess he wasn’t too old for her, and she is still my friend, so I probably shouldn’t say shit like that. He’s a good guy. He is one of the guys who runs Waverly Inn. I met with him and he said, “We will give you a job as a bouncer, you have broken up fights before?” and I said, “Yeah, sure."

It used to be that a plate of gourmet mac n' cheese was the Kraft dinner I spiked with some dill, diced tomatoes, and a can of tuna. But since moving to New York, a brave new world of haute mac n' cheese has revealed itself to me, and not only is it often exquisite, but it's fattening as all hell. Not counting the arrogant $55 plate of M&C at the Waverly Inn, here's where you can find the strongest marriages of macaroni and cheese in New York.

1. Roebling Tea Room (Williamsburg) - You wouldn’t' think so, right? But trust. Served in a skillet still sizzling, the pasta is more tortellini than macaroni. Opt for the crisp bacon strips on top, and you won't be sorry, but your arteries will.

2. Blue Smoke (Gramercy) - This bourgeois barbeque joint sells their cheesy pasta as a no-frills side, which means you have a perfect excuse to order their Memphis baby back ribs and eat away whatever ails you.

Martini Park and Marquee co-owner Chris Barish on underage promoting, the power of the water-sipping celeb, bringing club culture to suburbia, and growing up with the Governator.

Point of Origin: I’m from New York. I started throwing parties at my parents’ home when I was young. We’re talking really young, like 15, 16 years old. You know, there used to be fun clubs in New York. They would have an off night, and I would come in and make a deal with whomever the owner was, because either they were failing a bit or they wanted to make a little extra money. I’d promote to the various people I had met in grade school who had then graduated to high school. When you think about it, we were really young, and I can’t believe these clubs would let us do it. It was New York, and it was a different time, different era, different laws, and a different mayor.

The Waverly Inn may very well be the new Café Society, but we don’t see anyone lying around in settees there. Least of all its star chef John DeLucie, who likes a meal you can eat with one fork and has a story or two to tell in his upcoming memoir, The Hunger.

Nightly they come, exiting chauffeured limos and Maybachs, rushing by the paparazzi, and entering a Bilbo Baggins-sized door into the magical labyrinth called The Waverly Inn. There’s no need to name them. “They” have all been there, whether strolling from neighboring West Village brownstones (“Hey, Hah-vee! Can we get one shot?”), or “just in” from Los Angeles. Cannes. Sundance. Turks. Rehab.

Now enjoying a pleasant institutional season, Graydon Carter's Waverly Inn recognizes that some (previously discouraged) new customers might need a little assistance in finding the place. Therefore, the Waverly now supplies a helpful New York neighborhood map inside its matchbooks.

Meet the wonder-boy of the bar and hotel worlds. That is, if you can keep up with him.

Sean MacPherson and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore must use the same beauty treatment. Both have the gangly strides and the “dude” demeanor of a Valley teenager, and the energy of a golden retriever. "It’s taxidermy,” says MacPherson, who we caught up with while he galloped on a treadmill in Manhattan. "I'm pickled in alcohol."

The bi-coastal MacPherson, 42, fresh off the success of the West Village’s Waverly Inn—which he co-owns with longtime business partner Eric Goode—recently opened Bar Lubitsch in Hollywood, a Russian-themed vodka emporium. The Mao-red space has already become the hot ticket for a subtly-chic tribe of Angelenos who aren’t looking for a trendy, micro-mini-wearing set, but are looking for a sophisticated outpost to chill in (with 200 vodkas behind the bar). No surprise that his partner, Jared Meisler, managed cool-and-collected Bar Marmont when MacPherson owned that hot property too. In Los Angeles, MacPherson still presides over the enduring Swingers, the Mexican cantina El Carmen, and the accommodating Jones. In New York, he co-owns The Park, the Maritime Hotel, and together with Goode, he’s just opened two new boutique hotels, the posh former brothel Lafayette House (where Ross Bleckner and Julian Schnabel have been doing time), as well as the antiques-crammed, architectural salvage outpost that is the 135-room Bowery Hotel.

Growing up “between Malibu and Mexico,” MacPherson may have picked up a little of both place’s laissez-faire vibes. “I’ve worked my whole life,” he says, “but I’ve never had a job.”