Bagels, Pizza, Hot Dogs and Race Tracks - New York City?

In the morning, I used to take the 2 or 3 train from Clark Street to get to my studio in Manhattan’s meatpacking district. Here’s some advice, if you happen to make that commute, too: When you get off the elevator at the Clark Street station, go down the stairs to the left. On the platform, make a sharp left; this will position you directly behind a column (A). It’s pretty close to the tracks, so there will be very few people around, thereby improving your chances of getting on, even at rush hour. If you happen to bring a newspaper, use one door further up (B).

When you arrive the at 14th Street station and step off, you’ll be near the 13th Street exit, and the door will open right in front of the stairs (C). If you chose the newspaper option mentioned above, the door will open in front of a convenient trash can, where you can discard your paper (D) before leaving the subway system.

Momofuku Ssäm Bar

207 Second Ave., at 13th St.; 212-254-3500

For a restaurant empire that everyone likes to label Asian, Momofuku covers a lot of regional American ground. Case in point: the killer biscuits and gravy on Ssäm Bar’s new weekend brunch menu. Like many winning dishes, this one was born at a family meal, when a cook named Gabe resuscitated his Atlanta family’s biscuit recipe. The special Momofuku touch, though, comes from the rendered pork-jowl fat baked into them. That, and the country-ham scraps enriching the gravy, and the slices of savory ham-hock terrine that are toasted onto one half of the biscuit before it’s piled with tremulously soft eggs stirred with crème fraîche over almost imperceptible heat.

Best Pig-out

Irving Mill

116 E. 16th St., nr. Irving Pl.; 212-254-1600

Young chefs used to make their bones concocting arcane foie gras recipes and whipping up fancy French veloutés. Not anymore.

Just ask Ryan Skeen, at the Union Square restaurant Irving Mill, who was nominated for a James Beard award on the strength of one dish.

His inspired “charcroute” plate is a charcuterie for the Golden Age of Pork, a genius meathead dissertation on the bountiful possibilities of head-to-tail cooking. For a mere $22, this festival of fatty goodness includes two pork sausages (boudin noir and blanc), two kinds of cooked pork (glazed shoulder, melting pork belly), a rasher of deep-fried pork ribs tossed in salt and pepper, and little jellied squares of classic French-style pig’s-head terrine.

Most artful of all, however, are the crispy pig’s trotters, which are deboned, rolled in a golden bread-crumb crust, and cut in dainty, eminently digestible squares, like some twisted pork addict’s version of a freshly baked brownie.

I'm not flying anywhere to eat pigs tails.