A couple of weeks ago in New York, I was all set to meet my good friend Jonathan Galassi, the editor-in-chief at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, at Fiamma downtown, when he forwarded me an e-mail telling him they couldn’t honor our reservation because they had closed — for good. Restaurants, like pretty much every other business these days, are suffering. The same company that owned Fiamma closed Ruby Foo’s, a West Side institution, in the same week. I was almost depressed that I could get heretofore impossible tables so easily the whole time I was in the city. So I was glad to hear from the amazing Eric Ripert, chef and partner (with Maguy Le Coze) at Le Bernardin, that business in 2008 (and thus far in 2009) was only down by single digits from their strongest year ever, 2007.

I first went to Le Bernardin in the early 1980s when it was still in Paris, and I will never forget my first meal there: a thin, perfectly cooked paillard of salmon in garlic cream. The restaurant changed fish cookery — and especially the way Americans thought about fish (Mrs. Paul’s anyone?) — forever. Ripert, an apostle of the late, great Jean-Louis Palladin, took over the kitchen after the brilliant Gilbert Le Coze died way too young, and he is still hard at it. I love the way he thinks about food and cooking. A few years ago, on a visit to his office, I asked him what he thought of a cocky famous chef who had just been quoted saying he never tasted his food when cooking — that he didn’t need to. Ripert, grinning, pulled a spoon out of the breast pocket of his blue oxford cloth shirt. I, too, taste when I cook, and when I taste what Ripert cooks I have been known to cry real tears. My favorite Le Bernardin head waiter (sadly now retired) told my husband-to-be on his first visit to the restaurant that he loved it when I came in because I always got so emotional about what he put in front of me.

That’s why, in my current budget-conscious state, I will choose to forfeit, say, a new pair of Manolos in favor of a meal at Le Bernardin — because of the passion it inspires. Now, the passionate Ripert and the equally passionate (and completely gorgeous) Maguy Le Coze are showing compassion as well.

During 2009, for every diner who comes to the restaurant, they will donate $1 to City Harvest, the world’s first "food rescue" organization that feeds more than 260,000 hungry men, women and children in New York City each year. City Harvest collects around 20 million pounds annually of excess food from all segments of the food industry (grocers, restaurants, corporate cafeterias, farms and manufacturers) and delivers it free of charge to more than 600 community food programs throughout the city. Ripert, who serves on the board, has been involved in the organization for ten years. Now, indirectly, you can be, too — while also enjoying mind-blowing food and perhaps even shedding a tear or two.