let's do brunch; The renowned chef David Bouley demonstrates how that oft-maligned weekend ritual can become a celebration for the senses.

Were David Bouley, chef and restaurateur extraordinaire, to invite you to meet him at the corner for a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, you'd go. In the maestro's hands, that humble meal could be nothing less than a luscious gastronomic delight for the senses. Even if it rained, the umbrella would be beautiful.

So a recent invitation to brunch upstairs at his newly opened Bouley Bakery & Market at the corner of West Broadway and Duane Street in New York seemed nothing less than manna from Tribeca. Everything old is new again, and the idea of brunch-a crunchy, cozy, sort of boozy, blowsy, quasi-sophisticated swinging thing where American men were first given real quiche to eat back in the seventies-sounded wonderful.

("That modern invention with the horrid name of brunch" was how the patrician Millicent Fenwick in 1948 referred to it in Vogue's Book of Etiquette. But never mind.)

Go ahead and be the first on your block to give a brunch some autumn Sunday soon. Cheaper and less formal than a dinner party or a lunch, brunch is easier on the nerves and just the occasion for jeans and those new YSL Rive Gauche suede platform loafers you are hankering for. Kate Moss, by all paparazzi accounts, is always dressed for brunch.

What you serve is up to you. A Swedish smorgasbord? A buffet of Bloody Marys, kedgeree, scrambled eggs, fish cakes, bacon, sausage, scones, and jams? Bran muffins? (Absolutely Delicious!, a cookbook written and illustrated by the Ellen Tracy designer Linda Allard, has the best bran-muffin recipe in the Free World.) How about a lovely salad and that much-maligned French pie, the aforementioned quiche?

"Stay away from heavy proteins at that hour of the day," advises David Bouley. "And maybe you want to follow the European brunch concept, where everyone brings something. It's the weekend, people are just waking up, they are relaxed, less pressured. Some people serve buffet, others preferred seating. I like a brunch where everyone participates in the cooking and then eats."

This day Bouley opted for a much more mixed menu: salmon rosti; poached organic yellow Cornish-hen eggs with spinach puree, Serrano ham, and wild-mushroom broth, and ...