Breakfast is my favorite meal.

Breakfast is primordial for everyone I know who equates French toast or biscuits with Mom and unconditional love. That's why I think the Parker Meridien's spiffy Norma's, with its exuberant all-day breakfast, is worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. Pancakes by a mom on Prozac. Fruit smoothies. A duo of croissants oozing smoked-salmon-flecked scrambled eggs. A deuce of poached eggs atop duck-confit hash. Nothing is less than outsize at TriBeCa's Kitchenette either, though the breakfast special -- two eggs, bacon, and cheese on loveable homemade biscuits with coffee -- costs more after 11 a.m. There's no snooze-you-lose tax on the gingerbread waffles with pumpkin butter. And my quest for the cherry pie of my midwestern childhood is finally -- well, almost -- satisfied. It is awfully close to lunch, and Kitchenette's plump exuberant beauty, a now-and-then special or baked custom order, is only a tad too sweet.

Corn arepas, elegant orange- sour-cream doughnuts, and eggs with a truly wondrous biscuit at Campo in the Village make it worthwhile to get out of bed before noon. Breakfast gets a curtain call after midnight at the Brooklyn Diner: sturgeon with scrambled eggs and onions, or my favorite, "the mixed-marriage" (eggs baked into challah with hot Italian sausage, roasted peppers and polenta).

Where should we andiamo for Italian?

Felidia is as warm and pampering as ever, with a new breath of energy at the range. Sauces are lighter, pastas still wonderful; and entrées get deftly tweaked. Remi is grander and more ambitious than most Venetian canteens, exactly why I like it. Miraculously, Bar Pitti keeps its side-street-in-Florence feel and authentic Tuscan fare. Puglianese and Sardinian cooking, the fireplace in winter, the garden in summer, are the draw at i Trulli. I prefer the Tuscan specialties at Osteria del Circo, where my after-theater supper is pizza and a glass of champagne at the bar. Mark Strausman honors his adopted cucina with considerable style at Campagna. Success at San Pietro has given the Bruno brothers courage to dip deeper into the cuisine of their native Salerno. Il Mulino is a garlicky Heaven of delicious excess, but you won't find me suffering the torturous wait unless I'm with a regular who can cut the line. Stop by Trattoria Dell'Arte for the mixed-antipasto platter before Carnegie Hall, and you may spot Craig Claiborne eating his inevitable chicken-liver crostini with a martini. At lunch, look for Tina Brown and maybe the infamous Lucianne.

Is there one particular chef you're high on?

I am happily thrown off balance by the poetry and complexity -- indeed, the unbridled chutzpa -- of Rocco DiSpirito's cooking at Union Pacific. Spunked up by glowing response to his bravura, he is hawking a $350 Menu Luxe Louis XIII -- eight courses, including a flight of caviars, white-truffle-and-langoustine soup, and charred Kobe beef with Thai ginger. If one gemlike boucheful on the house amuses, how about three for $20 extra, or five for $30, on the $59 prix fixe? An exquisite trio of miniatures -- sea-urchin-spiked blue-fin and fluke morsels, charred mackerel in pear-champagne vinaigrette, and caviar-bearing quail egg-in-a-hole -- wake up our taste buds for the alchemy that follows: a masterly toss of sweetbreads and quail touched with apricot-black-truffle vinaigrette. The cassolette of white-truffle risotto beside its mini-cassolette of shrimp-tomato fondue is an homage to Gray Kunz, says DiSpirito. But Nantucket scallops with lamb's tongue, and his mysterious white-curry tripe with cod cheeks in a haze of lemongrass, galanga, and kaffir leaf, can have sprung only from his own feverish cortex.

Sometimes I get so homesick.

Home is an homage to growing up well-fed in the heartland. But it is tiny and always booked, so I'm happier tucked into a booth in its roomier offshoot, Drovers Tap Room, sharing James Beard's parsley salad with country ham, rich iron-skillet macaroni, lamb pot roast, or the slow-cooked pork shank. Sometimes, I just need a great burger with the house-made ketchup. Actually, chef Larry Forgione is Beard's earliest and most dedicated disciple. Taste the legacy at An American Place with its wonderful chowders, cedar-planked salmon, berry shortcake, and double-chocolate pudding. Soul food at Sylvia's in Harlem will cure those homesick blues (but avoid Sunday breakfast if you're allergic to tour buses). Settling into Blue Ribbon or the Blue Ribbon Bakery is like melting into Grandma's arms. The Bromberg brothers will feed you whatever you long for -- roasted peppers with an anchovy purée, corned-beef sandwich, veal pot pie, or potato latkes. Virgil's Real BBQ and Tennessee Mountain might not convince a Texan or a southern expat, but I have daydreams about those ribs. And there's fresh-baked bread and slow-cooked lamb at Bouterin, just like maman used to make.