If you view a leisurely lunch of escargots and roast lamb as the height of civilization -- and there's no reason not to -- then you can look forward to the opening of Benoit, Alain Ducasse's new bistro, where the cooking feels like Paris about a hundred years ago. After taking over the original Benoit in the French capital, where the bistro's been an institution since 1912, Ducasse has established an American outpost in Midtown in the former space of the grand dame of French haute cooking, La Cote Basque.

Bistro cooking isn't about surprise -- it's about executing the classics, and Benoit delivers with a terrine de foie gras, and an expertly turned lobster ravioli. You can also have a roast chicken for two, or pike quenelles, a dish Julia Child always loved. Finish with a wheel of Camembert and a chocolate soufflé and you probably won't need to eat again for at least a day. --David Coggins

60 West 55th Street
New York, NY 10019
(646) 943-7373

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(Fromage de Tête "Gilles Verot" at Bar Boulud; Photo: Eric Laignel)

Eating terrine is a good excuse to enjoy a surprising amount of different meat in one bite. At its best, terrine is better than the sum of its parts. You can learn why from a master in the new cookbook Terrine, by Stéphane Reynaud, a French chef and author. Reynaud has the ideal pedigree -- he comes from a family of butchers and he grew up eating terrine everyday. His recipes are simple enough -- the most difficult part of the process may be asking your butcher for two pig's snouts for the pig's head pâté. If you prefer food with less of a flesh-like color, Reynaud also includes vegetable and dessert terrines. All you need is a ceramic dish -- or even a preserving jar -- and a dash of fearlessness.

For those not inclined to sink their own hands into chicken livers, try Bar Boulud, a standout addition to the Daniel empire and supreme terrine destination. It may be located across from Lincoln Center in New York City, but the restaurant's soul is all Southern France, home of Daniel himself and the birthplace of terrine. You can make a meal of the charcuterie plate, which, on a recent visit, offered different terrines containing everything from rabbit to guinea hen to veal to braised beef cheeks. The Pâté Grand-Mere (with chicken livers, pork and cognac) looks unremarkable and like every pâté you'd had before; the difference, however, is that probably it's better than any one you've ever tasted.

All this is courtesy of the charcutier chef, Sylvain Gasdon. The terrines are laid out in a glass case for your inspection, and once they're paired with good bread, a few cornichons and a hearty glass of Rhone you're in business. You may want to save room for a lighter than light Croque Monsieur and a winning Gateau Basque. It's peasant food taken to the level of high art. When you finally make it outside, you might have to walk a few blocks before you know what hit you. --DAVID COGGINS

(Dégustation de Charcuterie from Bar Boulud; Photo: Eric Laignel)

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With the growing allegiance to head-to-tail eating -- think of the transatlantic cult of London's chef Fergus Henderson -- it was perhaps only a matter of time before a New York restaurant made its way to the end of the swine. Yet it's still a surprise to come across the nine-course tasting menu (graciously priced at $40) at Hakata Tonton, a tiny restaurant in the West Village, whose principal ingredient is tonsoku, that's to say pig's feet.

If you're feeling bold, chef Himi Okajima's simple grilled tonsoku can't hide anywhere on the plate.  It's a bracing combination of crispy skin, rich pork, and, there's no other way to say it, rather gelatinous extras.  Oh, and Okajima doesn't feel compelled to cut off the toenail, that's there too. More timid souls can opt for the fried rice, which is airy and cuts the intensity of the tonsoku.  This is not food for the faint of heart; on a recent night, a couple perused the menu -- the woman was an avowed vegetarian -- and beat a quick retreat.  Hakata Tonton certainly has its rewards, but, as a friend said, "It is a particular taste." The easily frightened need not apply. --DAVID COGGINS

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What CBGB was to punks, the Nat Sherman shop is to smokers in Bloombergian New York: a haven for indulgence, devoid of puritan opprobrium. As they put it, "Your freedom of choice, often denied to you as a smoker, can be exercised and expressed here." Exercising said freedom has become that much more rewarding, thanks to their newly completed, membership-only Johnson Club Room -- named after Sherman's rather peculiar sobriquet for his wife, Lydia. Situated in the basement of their shop on East 42nd Street -- perfectly located for a pre-power meeting drag -- it functions as a combination coffee shop and university club, with a somehow inevitable jazzy soundtrack and darkroom-red lighting.  Some fine wines and top shelf liquor accompany Irving Farm coffee, Murray's Cheese, Russ & Daughters smoked salmon, and other Gotham delicacies. But the real attractions -- lovingly depicted in the portraiture lining the walls -- are the cigars. Any imaginable variety can be found at the ground level shop (all but those from communist lands, anyway) along with all manner of cigarettes and pipe tobacco, but club members can make use of their private storage locker, and brag about sharing walk in humidor space with the likes of Joe Torre, Rudy Giuliani, and Bill Richardson. While Nat Sherman's Michael Holba admits that he's "keeping [his] dry cleaner in business," there's enough air conditioning capacity to clear a 27-story building, and smell is anything but dive bar stale. While you won't be able to make a night of it -- the club closes at 8pm -- the Johnson is a welcome throwback to a city untouched by modern modesty. Surgeons general be damned.  --NICHOLAS MOSQUERA

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Four out of the five senses agree: fish tacos are disgusting. They smell like the Long Beach Aquarium, look like they were scraped off the floor of an arts and crafts class, break apart in your juice-covered hands, and sound like a particularly foul euphemism. But taste overpowers all else for Los Angelenos, and locals go straight to the man himself, Señor Fish, to snag their aquatic snack.

With a handful of locations in LA including Downtown and Pasadena, this lesser-known chain is an underground fish taco empire. On a recent evening, I dropped by the Señor Fish in Eagle Rock at 4803 Eagle Rock Blvd.  The entrance is constructed with a cathedral-style gazebo, suggesting that this is where the Angels come for their plain fish tacos, ceviche tostadas or grilled trout. Electric pinks and teals cover the walls inside and out on the patio, giving the restaurant a Mexi-tropical vibe.

At the suggestion of Sandra, who works the register in front, I ordered the non-battered halibut taco and the lightly battered orange roughy, which is a deep-sea fish in the slimehead family -- a family I assume could benefit from a dip or two in the deep fryer.  The halibut taco, blanketed in a double-wrapped flour tortilla and littered with crisp lettuce and fresh tomatoes, retained its moisture and fish taste. I decided to make over the roughy with a trip to the salsa bar -- all are house-made.  Following a treatment with tomatillo-green chili salsa, the orange roughy was muy rico -- a perfect balance of flavors and textures. Unlike Taco Bell or Del Taco, the bottom of the fish taco food chain, and even the upstarts Rubio's grill and Baja Fresh, Señor Fish delivers on its promise of chewy, crunchy, fish tacos fresh off the docks. 

Sadly, though, due to a large lunch, I sinned in the church of fish tacos and did not clean my plate. As a result, I got a flat tire pulling out of the parking lot. Come for the orange roughy or the lunch special, but beware of the taco Gods. --MICKEY STANLEY

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Hordes of people who enjoy guzzling wine and gobbling hors d'oeuvres in the sizzling Miami heat (also a great way induce a dizzy spell) recently attended the 7th annual South Beach Food & Wine Festival. Tickets were completely sold out, and crowds proudly sporting plastic wineglasses-on-a-rope around their necks pushed through the tents pitched along Ocean Avenue. Along with various restaurant and winery booths offering tastings, there were four days of seminars with names like "Bourbon Mixology on the Beach," "Unlocking the Secrets of Boutique Cheeses," and "Getting to Grips with Grappa." The foodie stars came out at night, with parties hosted by Mario Batali, Jamie Oliver, Danny DeVito, Rachael Ray and (BAM!) Emeril, to name a few. The event is such a success that its promoters plan to bring the whole circus to DUMBO, Brooklyn this fall. And if I thought Floridians could be pushy with those samples, we ain't seen nothing yet. --TASHA GREEN

(Jamie Oliver, Anthony Bourdain, and Mario Batali)

(Emeril Lagasse)

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Only at Le Cirque would you find a bar casually flanked by a flat-screen TV on one wall showing the 1956 musical High Society on and a computer screen on the other, ticking away U.S. treasury securities. But so it goes at the New York fixture's new wine lounge, where, as of Saturday, midtowners can revel -- sans sportscoat dress code -- in such bourgeois delights as, gasp, finger foods, like signature mini cheeseburgers (paired with a 2005 Bunyip Estates "Reserve" from Barossa Valley) and hamachi sashimi with green tea marinade (paired with saki) from executive chef Christophe Bellanca.

I popped in on Thursday to have a peek at the place, a very red space designed by Raphael Alberez of Design Elements. Le Cirque's call to the younger set seemed to be answered as a couple of pretty young brunettes on a low lying leather chaise chirped away in French beneath what appeared to be a suspended medicine cabinet with sliding glass doors. Perhaps unconvinced by the yoga-esque principle that has also been employed in the wine lounge -- that the more time one spends close to the earth the more relaxed one is -- the two ladies soon opted for big-girl seats at the bar.

Sirio Maccione

Perched on an orange leather ottoman waiting myself, I thought of the man who first told me about Le Cirque years ago. A friend's father, he was a slow-talking Nashville gentleman who favored silk pocket squares and in his younger days, Studio 54 and the Mud Club. He knew Le Cirque in its heyday of the late seventies and had described to me a magical place which I caught glimpses of here, in the Bloomberg Tower space they have occupied since 2006. In the wine lounge, it was the whimsical umbrella-like fixtures hanging from the ceiling and, in the dining room, there was the single perfect ravioli that punctuated my chicken consumee and the secret recipe revealed at the bottom of my crème brulee. But the imminent success of the latest addition sat at a table on the edge of the lounge, just outside the main dining room. The owner Sirio Maccione (who favors the Chicken Paillard with sautéed mushrooms and the Minute Steak with pommes frites and béarnaise) enjoyed lunch with his wife and dolled out double-cheek kisses to a bubbly young blonde, very much the duke of his newly extended domain. --LIZ MCDANIEL

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When you've decided to order a bottle of Bordeaux, but are trying to choose between a Lynch-Bages from 1998 and one from 2000, you could have an elaborate tete-a-tete with the Sommelier. Or, in the case of the wine bar at Adour, Alain Ducasse's new restaurant in the St. Regis Hotel, you can read about the differences on an interactive menu projected onto the surface of the bar itself. It's like having a discreet private expert on hand at all times, which helps when you're coming to terms with a wine cellar stocked with 12,000 bottles.

The four-seat bar offers exquisite small dishes -- glazed pork belly, seasonal vegetables, even osetra caviar -- which are carefully conceived to be matched with the wine. On a recent visit, the knowledgeable barman recommended to me a bargain white from Greece of all places -- a crisp Domaine Sigalas 2006 -- to go with a cucumber-marinated hamachi. Should you wish to wade into the deep end of four-figure bottles, Adour can happily accommodate you.

The interactive menu takes a moment to get used to (apparently women are faster adapters than men), but once you've settled in you can scroll through the wine list, which describes qualities of each wine -- from the provenance to tasting notes to geographical facts ("lying on a large hillside of deep gravel in the Plateau de Bages") and other details ("the estate has remained practically unchanged since the 16th century"). After a glass or two you feel like quite the expert.

The system is also available in the private dining room, so your guests can know the details of the winning bottles you've chosen. Does this all this render the sommelier obsolete? Not quite. Adour's wine director, Thomas Combescot, told me, "The more people learn, the more they want to know. And that's why we're here." --DAVID COGGINS

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Visitors to the Kentucky Derby have to choose more than just the winners of the races -- they also have to decide whether to drink mint juleps or go for straight bourbon. (Perhaps the julep during the race and the bourbon once you lose your bets.) What do these imbibers eat when they're suffering a hangover the next day? Most likely the Hot Brown, the sandwich that has been an institution since its inception at Louisville's Brown Hotel in 1926.

The sandwich was originally conceived as an alternative to the ham and eggs that the hotel's kitchen served to dancers in the wee hours of morning. It's described on the menu as roast turkey, toast points, Mornay sauce, Parmesan, finished with bacon and tomatoes. Sounds simple enough. That may not prepare you for what arrives: strips of bacon crossed on an open face sandwich, with a shocking amount of creamy sauce, all served in a brown pot that's straight from the broiler. It's quite something: intensely rich and almost impossible to finish. The menu doesn't mention the amount of butter and eggs they use -- which is wise, once you see the recipe. Yet somehow one still finds room for Derby Pie. -- DAVID COGGINS

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Finally, Las Vegas will have it all: this Friday the first wine auction ever in Sin City will be held at Alex, the flagship restaurant in the Wynn Hotel. Zachy's is putting 367 lots under the hammer, an inventory culled from different sellers that mostly includes Bordeaux, Burgundies and Champagnes.

A percentage of the proceeds will go to support the new Frank Ghery-designed Lou Ruvo Brain Institute. But more glittering than a titanium-clad research center is the auction's setting in Las Vegas. It could mark the westward shift of auctions from New York, which snatched the industry from London ten years ago. Las Vegas buyers are a force in wine auctions – who else but hoteliers and high rollers can afford runaway Bordeaux prices, like the jeroboam of Petrus 1982, estimated at $45,000-$80,000? And what's sold in Vegas might stay in Vegas.

The showstopper is the final lot in the auction, 30 bottles of Screaming Eagle 1996, estimated at $75,000-$100,000. But the record-breakers to watch right now are from Champagne. Take the two half-cases of Krug 1995 Clos d'Ambonnay, estimated at $20,000-$40,000 each, or to press the divide button, over $6,000 for a single bottle. The price is justified: 1995 is the inaugural vintage of Clos d'Ambonnay, only 250 cases were made, and the cases themselves are mahogany. But still, this sets a new standard, allowing other Champagnes, like a case of Roederer Crystal Rose 1996, estimated at $5000 to $7500, to punch above their weight.

And it makes a wine that could be cellared for another 50 years, like the Methuselah of Domaine de la Romanée Conti 1988, estimated at $40,000-$70,000, seem like a bargain.-- OLIVER SCHWANER-ALBRIGHT

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Greg Brier's new restaurant in Manhattan's Flatiron district, Aspen, attempts to span the dual worlds of city chic and country cool. If this were the real Aspen, of course, you'd hobble in the joint in your ski boots for an apres-ski toddy a la the Jerome Hotel Bar in days of old. Instead you're greeted by a Manhattan version of mountain cool: Lucite deer heads and antlers hang above the bar and the DJ booth; photorealist birch-tree murals line the spare dining room (complete with a central fire pit), and bison sliders kick off a menu of gourmet comfort food. Best of all, though, is the private Gonzo Room, a detailed tribute to Aspen's late and infamous resident, Hunter S. Thompson, rendered vaguely in the style of his favorite hangout after the J-Bar, the Woody Creek Tavern. It's got its own bathroom and its own bartender; what it doesn't have (yet) is Thompson's favorite Tavern beverage, the Biff. Tell the bartender and order your own: It's a shot of half Bailey's and half Jameson's. 30 West 22nd Street, New York NY (212-645-5040) www.aspen-nyc.com --COREY SEYMOUR

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MV STAT: DB Bistro Moderne in New York's db Burger Double Truffle--a sirloin patty filled with braised short ribs, foie gras and 20 grams of shaved black truffles--costs $150 and holds the Guinness World Record for the world's most expensive burger...

Just two hours east of Memphis, smoked catfish -- the pride of Pickwick, Tennessee -- is served up in an unassuming building that was once a fish processing plant. Or so I hear. I had my first taste of the Pickwick Catfish Farm's specialty via take-out. And, no pun intended, I was hooked.

Not only did the catfish look fabulous, perfectly peppered and full-bodied on the plate, but I was blown away by their tender, smoky goodness. When I heard that it was possible to have this down-home delicacy right here in New York City by mail order, well, I decided to get some for the not-so-good ole' boys in my life: my colleagues here at Men's Vogue. I was charmed by a lady named Betty at Pickwick who told me that by "mail order," they mean, literally order by mail -- print a form from their website and mail it in with a check. They do not take credit cards, of course. So my check is on the way and I know it's worth the wait. It's like they say: the harder the chase, the sweeter the catch. --LIZ McDANIEL

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Culinary adventurers Matt and Ted Lee may have been born in New York City, but they know a thing or two about Southern hospitality. Even though this time of year is the busiest for their mail-order snack food business, they took a break from testing recipes in their long adopted hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, to make me a welcoming oyster shooter. (Matt tried hot sauce and blood-orange bitters, but simple turns out to be best: lemon juice, green onion and Bluffton oysters.)

The pair mixed a punch made of Mount Gay Rum, Apple Jack Whiskey and sweet green tea and perfected the proportions on a shrimp-and-deviled-egg salad. They also shared a couple of culinary crowd-pleasers perfect for winter from their book, The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-be Southerners, which was named the 2007 James Beard Foundation Cookbook of the Year.

The bourbon balls are made with a bit of cayenne for spice, and the oyster pie is best served with a mellow white Burgundy, a German Gewürztraminer or Riesling. Where cocoa meets chili pepper and nutmeg meets brine, the recipes are a study in contradictions, not unlike their creators. "We're just two kids from New York," Ted explains, who have a hankering for Southern cuisine. "We're never bored by it." Clearly. --LIZ McDANIEL

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I was enjoying a fine three-course dinner at the Italian restaurant Fiamma a couple weeks ago (the New York Times just gave it three stars) when I mentioned to the sommelier that I had to go to Vegas that weekend. I wasn't complaining, since I actually like Vegas, just explaining that I'd never had a really good meal there. She told me there was another Fiamma there, which was welcome news, but that one of her Vegas places was Lotus of Siam, a tiny place rumored to draw the likes of Anthony Bourdain and David Burke when they're in town tending to their mega-restaurants entombed within the casinos.

Lotus of Siam is not only off the strip (at 953 E. Sahara Ave., which is about a 10 minute cab ride), it's in a strip mall flanked by Korean BBQ joints and even a massage parlor. It is Vegas, after all. Inside, the walls are lined with autographed photos of D-list celebs--Pat Sajak, John Ratzenberger, Ronnie Fabre (?)--enjoying the fare. This is not a fancy place. There are chintzy chandeliers and a stainless steel buffet table in the center of the dining room, and a few Asian screen blinds for good measure.

Drunken Noodles Sea bass

I went on a Friday night and it was filled with locals and a very friendly wait staff. When I ordered the fried wantons, my waitress, a sweet older woman, corrected me and pointed to others. "No, the fried chicken dumplings is good, this is good..."

She was right. The bacon wrapped prawns were incredible. The Thai ice tea is so rich it looked like a root beer float. The entrees were very generous, and the northern Thai house specials were excellent--rich intense flavors, no excess grease, and spicy punches that linger seductively. It's the best Thai food I've ever had, and I'd finally found a bit of epicurean luck in Vegas. --MICHAEL MRAZ

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