If you have yet to try Calliope, the unassuming and entirely excellent restaurant on a busy corner of 2nd ave in New York’s east village I can’t encourage you enough to go. Now. The French-leaning menu offers a parade of unfussy, delicious fare (I’ve especially enjoyed the rustic chanterelle and leek tart and the tripe topped with gremolata and a fried egg), but it’s the lamb neck that, particularly with the recent wave of cold weather, feels perfect right about now. Slow-braised in a tangy hot and sour broth until it becomes meltingly tender, then topped with a tangle of bright green onion and accompanied by creamy mascarpone filled agnolotti (which, admittedly, we wouldn’t have minded a few more of), it is satisfaction on a plate. FV

There is a lot of goodness to be found on the menu at Yunnan Kitchen, the excellent new small-plate restaurant focused on the cuisine emanating from China’s Yunnan province. The one dish you’re going to have trouble sharing: the fried potato balls, which are, in taste and appearance, like a perfectly executed croquette, but with the addition of far-flung spices and a soy vinegar dipping sauce. A piece of advice: get two orders.

There are certain dishes that will always taste like home to me. And tripe, stewed until it’s meltingly soft in tomato sauce and sprinkled with cracked hot pepper and parmesan tops the list. That this time around, said tripe was made by my mother when she was visiting for Thanksgiving, just added to the transporting quality. FIORELLA V.

I have visited San Francisco many times over the years, and, on each of those visits, spent many hours eating my way through various corners of the city. But somehow it wasn’t until my most recent trip that I experienced Tartine, the landmark bakery opened in 2002 by pastry chef Elisabeth Prueitt and her husband, baker Chad Robertson. Crazy, I know, particularly for this avowed carbo-loader. And while everything that passed my lips that morning was scrumptious, it was the pain au chocolat, a revelation of sweet, buttery, flaky perfection that will be haunting my dreams until I can make it back. FIORELLA V.

PFC. That is what they are, in my humble opinion, doling out at Pies ‘n’ Thighs, my hands down favorite place for fried chicken in New York (though I will confess to the occasional Popeye’s trip too). I rarely veer from the fried chicken box: three pieces (all dark meat, please) of mouthwatering crispy delightfulness with either vinegary collards or potato salad, and a fluffy biscuit trickled with honey. End of summer food at its best. FIORELLA V.

Maraschino cherries. Jalapeno. Cough syrup. Milk. Honey. Just a few of the choice items a young (read: devastatingly attractive) Mickey Rourke eases into Kim Basinger’s mouth during this legendary scene in 9 ½ Weeks, the movie that was slow-moed through many a junior high sleepover in my youth. Yes, there have been far more discreet moments of food as a tool of seduction on the big screen over the years, but subtlety can be so overrated. FIORELLA V.

At the peak of crab season every year New York restaurant Back Forty invites diners to roll up their sleeves, pick up a mallet and dig in; and every year I happily oblige.  A bucket of Old Bay-doused crabs are emptied on newspaper-covered tables, along with whole buttery red-skinned potatoes and ears of sweet corn, all of it washed down with frosty pitchers of beer. It’s the most glorious mess.

Back Forty, 190 Avenue B, backfortynyc.com.

This glorious mess of grease and salt—pastrami, eggs, Swiss, pickled green tomatoes, and durkee sauce on sliced pumpernickel to be exact—on the breakfast sandwich menu is as substantial (“little” is a misnomer), as it is powerful in its ability to alleviate the most stubborn hangover. FIORELLA