Hasni "Jeff" Ghazali took a gamble on the Ninth Square 12 years ago, when no one else would. He was honored this week by aldermen for leading a "revival" in the heart of the city.

Ghazali, who owns Bentara restaurant, choked back tears as he accepted an aldermanic citation from Aldermen Alex Rhodeen and Bitsie Clark at Monday?s full board meeting.

The Malaysian-born restaurateur and his business partner, Bill Christian, moved Bentara from East Haven to the Ninth Square in 1997, when that region of downtown was a ghost town.

The move "signaled the beginning of Ninth Square?s revival and confirmed that a business could thrive there," said Rhodeen.

For almost one-quarter of a century, David Swensen, head of Yale University’s $16bn endowment, has been one of the most influential figures in US finance. Because of his extraordinary success in managing the Yale fund, Swensen has been described as the biggest “donor” in Yale’s history.

The 55-year-old divorced father of three arrives for lunch with the FT precisely on time. He has chosen Bentara, an airy Asian restaurant in Yale’s hometown of New Haven, Connecticut.

Times are bad. Unemployment is up, the stock market is down and it looks like the next Great Depression may be upon us. For food lovers this is a particularly unpalatable notion, since it raises the possibility that we'll have to forgo lobster and organic, hydroponic, locally-grown mesclun mix in favor of boiled shoe leather and tossed grass clippings. At the very least, we fear it might mean giving up fancy restaurant dinners and cooking cheap, bland meals at home.

These dark days call for a Gastronomic Stimulus Package, a plan for the nation that will allow the American people to eat well on a budget. Spurred by a sense of civic duty to provide just such a road map to inexpensive gustatory delight, we laid the following challenge before three of New Haven's top chefs: Show us how to make a delicious dinner at home for four people for less than $20.

Joining us were New Haven chefs Chris Sanseverino from Caseus (93 Whitney Ave.), Manuel Romero from Ibiza (39 High St.) and Jeff Ghazali from Bentara (76 Orange St.). The rules were that we would take them shopping and then to a normal home kitchen to cook up something grand.

All three chefs rose to the challenge, preparing delectable budget feasts.

New Haven native Chris Sanseverino, Caseus' mohawked head chef, took us step-by-step through making sweet-spicy homemade pork sausage with fennel seeds, served over orecchiette (pasta shaped like little ears), broccoli rabe and fresh ricotta. We finished the night with sizzling bananas topped with caramel sauce and whipped cream.

"Staring at a computer screen for hours every day gave me migraines. I would joke about being addicted to Tylenol (acetaminophen) because I had to take them every day. I had to take a pill every eight hours to make sure I didn?t get headaches," says the 39-year-old, who is also known as Jeff, a name given by his American friends while still in university.
Hasni Ghazali: ?If you 're going to do it (run a restaurant) for the money,you can forget it.'

Fresh out of Nebraska Wesleyan University in the United States with a degree in computer science, he found a job in the IT industry in New York almost immediately. He stuck with his job for as long as he could because it was the only thing he knew. Taking painkillers helped him get through the day, but it was certainly no way to live.