The winner and new heavy-weight brunch champion of the West Village: Wilfie & Nell. The W 4th Street spot, a relative newcomer that just began brunch this winter, would be a serious contender based on the strength of its eye-openers alone.

The traditionalist’s bases are well-covered by a champagne cocktail (with elderflower and orange bitters), the Spicy Bloody Mary (with a drop of Guinness and a splash of McClure’s Pickle juice) and, our new favorite breakfast drink, the Bloody Bull (the same as the aforementioned but with beef bullion). For those of you more into juice in the a.m. there is a Lagunita’s with grapefruit juice and ginger (a beermosa if you will),and the transcendent Breakfast Negroni (Compari, Compano, fresh lime and grapefruit juice).

Now it’s a well known fact, that brunch is a meal best accompanied by HP Sauce, and W&N does right on this score. The menu is not long, but it hits all the right notes — with shrimp and champ (scallion and potato tossed with seared shrimp and bacon crisps — real ones), an Irish back bacon and goat cheese sandwich, potato cake with ham steak and two fried eggs, and a standout corned beef hash and eggs (above) that bares no resemblance to the diner staple. Thick hunks of actual corned beef are mixed with potato wedges with red cabbage on the side and topped with poached eggs.

If you go off the brunch menu you won’t be disappointed either. The Scotch egg might stop your heart, and if that doesn’t do the trick the pigs in the blanket will. These are not sausages wrapped in some flaky puff pastry, no sir; that is an amateur’s blanket. These sausages are wrapped in bacon, thank you.

UPDATE: In fact, we did not make it in time and the house-made pastrami was gone by 3 p.m. Next time you will be ours, delicious smoked meat, next time.

As ridiculous a meat palace as The Breslin at the Ace is, it just gets beyond insane when you talk about two things the place does, and does very well. Beef tongue and bone marrow. We might not recommend getting both at the same meal (at least not until a national health plan comes through) but definitely go twice and sample each.

And the best part might be that these are available at lunch, easily the best time to visit The Breslin (unless you don’t want the luxury of walking in and sitting down, because you are the sort of twisted soul who needs a war story about how long you waited and how you were mistreated by the hostess).

Just the same, if you can get over there for lunch, you’d be hard-pressed to do better the beef tongue sandwich. Basically, brisket-like slabs of braised and falling apart beef tongue, smeared with a rough mustard and served on crisped buttery toast. As for the bone marrow, well, let’s just say they are well stocked: