Earlier this week the New York Daily News announced that talk show host and America's Next Top Model creator Tyra Banks had skipped out without paying at the Brooklyn Diner in New York. She’d been there for lunch last Saturday afternoon with rap mogul Russell Simmons and his two daughters, and reportedly left the West 57th St. restaurant without paying her lunch bill.

Tyra now says she was embarrassed to have to read about it in the paper, and has apologized to the restaurant owners. She claims it was all a misunderstanding, and that she thought Simmons had paid the $100 lunch bill or she wouldn’t have left.


"We're getting up and I'm like, 'Russell, I got it' and I'm opening up my wallet and (he said), 'No, Tyra, I got it ...'” she explained. She assumed from this that he’d paid the bill.

But this week the America's Next Top Model host found out otherwise when she opened the newspaper. "I read the damn Daily News and they're saying that I'm cheap and I didn't pay the bill."

The Brooklyn Diner didn’t seem to be upset about it, with the manager telling the Daily News he was “sure it was an honest mistake.”

During an appearance on ABC morning talk show "The View" on Thursday, she promised on-air that she would return to the restaurant and pay the bill, which she then did with cameras in tow.

Russell Simmons, on the other hand, apparently owes Tyra an explanation. "I couldn't even find his butt,” she says. “He didn't think I paid, he said he was gonna pay and he didn't. ... It's embarrassing."

In addition to apologizing and paying the bill, Tyra reportedly gave her waiter a hundred-dollar tip. “She was really apologetic and also she was really embarrassed,” said Alexis Reyes, the manager.

(Wondering what an America's Next Top Model host orders for lunch? According to the New York Daily News, she had conch fritters.)

-Mel Harris, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Sources: SF Gate, New York Daily News, UPI
Photo courtesy of Daily Blabber