Eggstra! Eggstra! Read all about it! The Beard Foundation has done it again! We've hatched a plan to feed you yet another eggstraordinary brunch, this one focusing on that most ideal, most complete, and, in recent years, most maligned of foods-the egg.

Our guide is Marie Simmons, whose latest cookbook, The Good Egg, helps lay to rest the egg paranoia that held the nation in its grip a few years back, alarming one and all with tales of high cholesterol and salmonella poisoning. At the very moment when nutritionists confessed that eggs aren't so bad after all, are healthful even, Simmons happened along with a book destined to be a classic, filled with tips, lore, and recipes for the endlessly versatile, ever-delicious egg. "It's a must-read for hard-boiled egg lovers," Stephanie Hartman wrote on www.onebigtable.com, praising its "companionable prose" and "jargon-free guidance." Simmons is a columnist for Bon Appètit and a Beard Award winner, whose previous books include Fresh & Fast; Lighter, Quicker, Better; and the A to Z cookbooks.

She'll be joined by chef John Imbriolo of Naples 45, a "vast and raucous" Neapolitan restaurant in the MetLife Building (Gael Greene in New York magazine). Southern Italian cooking is renowned for elevating humble foods, like the egg, into the realm of the sublime; we're in good hands with Imbriolo, whose past credits include the Marriott Marquis, the '21' Club, and the Doubles Club International. During his longtime association with Restaurant Associates, owner of Naples 45, Imbriolo has spent time in the kitchens of Cafè Centro and The Brasserie, but he mastered the fundamentals of Italian cooking under his dad, formerly the chef at Trattoria, which once occupied the Naples 45 space. Lasagne is a good way to test the mettle of an Italian chef, and Imbriolo's "rich and redolent" artichoke lasagne is so remarkable, Lenore Skenazy wrote in the Daily News, it "sends diners reeling."

Anecdotes about the marvelous egg abound. According to Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, Parisians used to bring their entire families to gaze upon King Louis XV as he ate his eggs; his dexterity was legendary. "In an almost religious hush," Toussaint-Samat wrote in the History of Food, "he would knock the small end off the egg with a single stroke of his fork, while an officer of the table called for attention, announcing, 'The King is about to eat his egg!'" Then there is the story, perhaps apocryphal, of the turn-of-the-century Romanian sculptor Brancusi, who was said to have renounced sculpture because he could create nothing so perfect as the egg.

What are you waiting for? Get cracking! Reserve now.