2008 may have brought some sad news on many fronts, but it also held some culinary developments well worth remembering. Now, the year’s best:

1. Best Excuse to Eat Eye-Popping Amounts of Pork: The annual metzgete pork-a-palooza at Trestle on Tenth. We first wrote about this pig fest last January, when Swiss bistro Trestle on Tenth offered its take on the Alpine Swiss winter tradition that uses every last bit of the pig following the season’s slaughter. A year later, we are still dreaming about the “home-made bratwurst, liver sausage and tumescent, Dirk Diggler-esque blood sausage, all piled high atop mountains of sauerkraut and mashed potatoes and covered with slabs of slow-braised and fat-stippled pork belly.” No news yet on whether Trestle chef Ralf Kuettel intends to make the metzgete an annual tradition at the restaurant, but if he does, we call dibs on the squeak.

2. Best Cold Weather Antidote: A bowl of the Shiromaru Classic tonkotsu ramen at Ippudo. Ippudo has become somewhat of a fixture on the burgeoning New York ramen scene since we reviewed its opening in March. At the time, we called this light, soy-flavored broth, boiled with pork bones and seasonings for fifteen hours, “a contender for the most sophisticated bowl of noodles in the city.” Ippudo’s loyal, predominantly Japanese crowds show we weren’t the only ones who saw the beauty in their broth.

3. Most Appetizing New Use for The Bread of Affliction: Vosges Haut-Chocolat’s chocolate-covered matzoh. Not very much can make a holiday all about austerity enjoyable, but Vosges manages the job admirably, adding a treat to the Passover arsenal that we would happily eat any time of year.

4. Website Most Likely to Make You Question Your Ability to Use Frosting: Cake Wrecks. We described the site in October as “an online rogues gallery of bakery disasters,” and as its popularity increases exponentially by the week, the cakes get more and more tragic. A friend of ours wrote in to tell us that she “laughed so hard looking at Cakewrecks that my landlady’s daughter, who lives below me, called to ask if I could please get a grip on myself so she could get some sleep.” We would love to see a dream team pairing of Cake Wrecks and the Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players–just imagine the results: songs like “Hapy Brtdae” and “Sexual Harassment: NO!”

5. Best New Excuse to Walk West: Nova Café’s Croissants. Seriously, if you have not yet made the trip up Tenth Avenue to 54th Street to Christophe Barbier’s little café, you have deprived yourself of one of the best baked goods in the city. When we wrote about Nova Café last February, we called his pains aux raisins among the best we have eaten in the US. But after a few more months of delicate butter horns and sugar-dusted almond treats, we are ready to call this match officially: Barbier outshines even local fave Claude.