Del Posto and Babbo have the same celebrity chef as an owner, reputations for impossible-to-get reservations, and customers who can afford, say, Del Posto’s seven-course “menu tradizionale” at $145 a person. It is not unreasonable to imagine that a good number of those customers make a living on Wall Street.

So their reaction after word spread on Wednesday that Mario Batali had mentioned them in the same breath as Stalin and Hitler was to let their hefty wallets do the talking and threaten to cancel their hard-won reservations.

Some complained on Twitter, some on the Bloomberg terminals they use to follow the markets. A food Web site, Eater, said one investment bank had even circulated a memo saying it would not reimburse receipts from Babbo or the other restaurants in Mr. Batali’s group.