There I was in Michael’s famous media restaurant on West 55th Street — a place I like, but it costs an arm and a leg for me to get there from where I live in Murray Hill, and it’s expensive if you have to pick up the check, and it’s always very noisy because everybody is table-hopping, air-kissing and making rotten jokes. But the people you see in this popular greeting spot, plus the masses of French-fried potatoes on almost every table, make you forget your troubles.

This particular day I was with my pals from the dashing Marie Claire magazine: the British import editor, Joanna Coles, who has given the Hearst publication a shot in the arm; and her aide-de-camp executive editor, Lucy Kaylin, who knows where all the bodies are buried. These two fine fillies were prepping to introduce me to someone I idolize — the one and only Tina Fey of "Saturday Night Live," the Emmy-winning "30 Rock," and the new movie in which Tina stars, "Baby Mama."

So in comes Tina, shyly, looking like a little girl instead of the entrepreneur she is described as being this very month in Portfolio, the sex symbol-cum-funny woman of Vanity Fair, the star of stars of all new youthful show biz on the cover of Entertainment Weekly — and, ta da — definitely in Marie Claire for May. (In this issue, they purport to tell "The Dirty Truth About Tina Fey." Inside, one finds Tina and her cohort Amy Poehler, who is also starring in "Baby Mama," doing their most ridiculous stuff in a Q & A interview which is a lot funnier than most things these days.)

Now, you might not stop Tina Fey on the street and ask for her autograph because she’d probably arrange it so that you didn’t notice her. On this day, she looked all of 12 years old and was wearing that little girl kind of tiny-gold-chain-with-locket-attached jewelry that you see in grade school.

She explains her role in the feature film "Baby Mama." She hires Amy to carry her baby "because, in the movie, I have a T-shaped uterus. But Amy is a dirtbag and just pretends that she is pregnant."

At one point, Tina decides she’ll discuss her film with a quote from Chris Rock: "It’s not like porn where you are a star just because you are in it!"

She adds, "The guy who wrote it and directed it is Michael McCullers and he used to be my office mate." We go on to discuss Tina’s "30 Rock" star Alec Baldwin and his "mother" in the sitcom, Elaine Stritch, and the delightful Holland Taylor who also appears in "Baby Mama." Tina says, "After the writer’s strike, we were able to do a number of shows for ‘30 Rock’ and we’ll do 22 more next season."

The best anecdote Tina delivered was to talk about her baby girl Alice, two and a half, and how she likes to play "Baby/Mommy." Tina: "I become the baby and she is the mommy. So, as baby, I start crying saying, ‘I want milk, give me milk!’ whereupon Alice turns her back on me and says sternly: ‘No, I doing my work!’ Well, you get the picture…"

The chief thing Tina Fey wants to get across at this lunch is to give us a hot recommendation. And I never take a movie star’s recommendation lightly, so this is it — to wit:

Tina Fey: "The greatest donuts I have ever had are at The Peter Pan Bakery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn."

P.S. As long as I’m talking about Marie Claire magazine, I might as well note that also in their May issue is a headline that goes "BEST BLOG FOR BLOWING OFF WORK: The Broads’ Side." Then the editors do a hot recommendation for wowOwow calling us "gutsy women" and saying we’ll discuss anything "from Botox to Carla Bruni to making your first million." Oh, that darling Marie Claire. If only I were 40 again.

PPS: Michael’s restaurant now boasts a book of its own, titled Welcome to Michael’s. It has been nominated for the James Beard Award and I am sure this only happened because I wrote the foreword for the damned thing. Go by Michael’s at 24 W. 55th Street in Manhattan and pick up this gem, or get on Amazon.com and order it.

And I know you are sick of my telling you this but if you’d like to read the Liz Smith syndicated column as it appears across the U.S.A.– well, you can read it right on my Home Page five days a week on this web site!