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Suckling-pig confit.
(Photo: Davies + Starr) |
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- Eleven Madison Park
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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.