Suckling-pig confit.   (Photo: Davies + Starr)

• Eleven Madison Park

  11 Madison Ave.; 212-889-0905

  It’s easy to overdose on pork products in New York restaurants these days. In fact, if you aspire to be a big-city gastronome, it’s almost an obligation. But if you have room in your cluttered belly for just one more pig dish, may we recommend a visit to Danny Meyer’s newly revamped Eleven Madison Park? The restaurant’s precocious Swiss chef, 29-year-old Daniel Humm, has come up with a condensed version of suckling pig that is part indulgence, part high-minded haute cuisine showpiece, and part pure barnyard pleasure. Humm braises his Vermont-grown piglet to a kind of preternatural softness, pulls the meat from the bone, simmers everything in duck fat, and presses it into a little brick of golden-brown crispness. This Heath Bar–size confection is plated with cipollini onions and a spot of fresh-made plum chutney, and it’s so full of crackly, porky flavor that you’ll be tempted to finish, then order it again.

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine