Cove Hollow Tavern

85 Montauk Highway

East Hampton

631-527-7131

Dinner Thursday through Monday

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that dining at the new Cove Hollow Tavern, in its infancy at the time of our visit, was a seamless, professional, and delicious experience. The reason it shouldn’t have been a surprise is that this new restaurant in East Hampton is brought to you by the fine folks of Vine Street Cafe on Shelter Island.

Cove Hollow Tavern is in the old Cafe Max space, or for the more nostalgic among us, Hobson’s Choice, on the corner of Montauk Highway and Cove Hollow Road. This has always been a tiny, cozy spot and it still is. If you are familiar with Vine Street Cafe, you will see some similar simple but sophisticated design elements: white walls with exposed beams, wooden chairs and tables, dark wood floors, and a few mirrors. A rowboat hangs from a back wall, railroad spikes are bent and hammered to become coat hooks, there’s a propellor ceiling fan, and what looks like an old torpedo on another wall. The menu also has some familiar items, such as Vine Street’s stupendous mushroom Bolognese, crinkle-cut fries with aioli, weekly specials, and some serious steak offerings.

We began our meal with flash-grilled yellowfin tuna, squid ink pasta, and haricot vert with soba noodles. 

The flash-grilled tuna was a neat row of six rectangular pieces of tuna divided by pickled shiitake mushrooms. It had a mild soy ginger sauce underneath, was garnished with cilantro micro greens, and was delicious and tender. The squid ink pasta (made with tonnarelli, a square rather than round-edged pasta) was garlicky and had shreds of pea tendrils and toasted bread crumbs. It was a perfectly sized portion to be an appetizer. The haricot vert and soba noodle salad was another delicious winner. The haricot vert were finely sliced and mixed with frisée, shredded carrots, and slivers of red onion, and topped with peanuts.

For entrees we ordered the mushroom Bolognese, roasted chicken, Atlantic snapper, and a side order of the crinkle-cut fries with aioli. The mushroom Bolognese is a signature dish of Vine Street Cafe (and now Cove Hollow, I presume), and it is superb. This version was made with mafaldine pasta, a.k.a. “little queens,” a flat ribbon-shaped pasta with wavy edges on both sides. The sauce is not too rich but full of flavor. I’m thinking there is some serious porcini action going on there. The roasted chicken was also excellent, but was not crisp-skinned as my guest had requested and had been assured that it was. Oh, well. It was served on top of braised kale, which had a nice peppery bite. The mashed root vegetables alongside seemed to be primarily potatoes with some carrots for color and sweetness. 

The Atlantic snapper was a very generous portion of fish that had a superb grilled flavor (I’m not sure what Atlantic snapper is, perhaps Northern red snapper?). It was served with “energy greens,” which seemed similar to the kale served with the chicken, cooked al dente with a hint of red pepper, along with some roasted sweet red pepper strips. As much as I appreciate a light fish on top of greens, I was ever so grateful for the rich, buttery sauce adorning it. The crinkle-cut fries with aioli were outstanding, but I couldn’t tell if they were commercially made or house-made. No matter, my only complaint is that there weren’t enough for us little piglets. The aioli was perfectly balanced, just a bit tart and garlicky.

The service on the night of our visit was excellent, which is once again surprising, considering how young this place is. Our waiter, Mikel, knew his stuff, went with the flow (as in our flow), and was charming. Prices at Cove Hollow Tavern are moderate to expensive. Starters are $13 to $21, mains are $28 to $54, weekly specials $28 to $135 (that’s for a Flintstones-sized porterhouse steak for two), sides are $11, and desserts are $12.

There were three desserts that night. We tried all three, and each and every one was a winner. They were orange creme brulée, profiterole, and a berry grunt. When’s the last time you heard that old fashioned Maritime dessert name? 

Creme brulée is a great, classic dessert, seldom served in restaurants anymore. This version was a perfectly set rich custard with just the right glass-crackly bruléed sugar topping. The profiterole was one big pate a choux puff filled with vanilla ice cream and topped with an excellent fudge sauce that got slightly hardened on contact. As if that wasn’t enough, the profiterole was sprinkled with a toasted almond brittle, giving the whole thing a warm, cold, creamy, crunchy texture. 

Grunts are old-fashioned desserts similar to cobblers and pandowdies, usually made with seasonal berries or apples. with a biscuit/cobbler-type topping. They are rustic and homey. This one was made with blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries and topped with a dollop of house-made mascarpone cheese. What was particularly nice about it was the fact that neither the fruit nor the topping was overly sweet. It was a subtle dessert, letting the fresh ingredients shine through.

I have always been charmed and impressed by Vine Street Cafe and the owners/chefs, Lisa and Terry Harwood. Now they have brought that charm, simplicity, and elegance to East Hampton. Let us rejoice and pass the Bolognese!

Mother’s Day is celebrated on different days and in many ways around the world.  In Thailand, it is celebrated on Aug. 12, the birthday of Queen Sirikit. Shrines are built, fireworks go off, and children present their mothers with garlands of jasmine flowers, which represent maternal love.

In Ethiopia, families gather to feast for several days in honor of motherhood on a holiday known as Antrosht, held at the end of the rainy season. Everyone brings ingredients for a meat hash, which the mothers prepare. Hmm, doesn’t sound like the day of pampering we have here in America.

In Mexico, Mother’s Day is always May 10. Mariachi bands are hired to serenade moms and big breakfasts of tamales and atole are served.

Americans spend $170 per family on Mother’s Day, according to the National Retail Foundation. Fifty percent of households buy cards, phone lines get jammed up, florists rejoice, and restaurants make a bundle on brunches. It is always celebrated on the second Sunday in May. I am proud to say that my one and only son, Billy, has mastered the art of Mother’s Day. There have always been homemade cards, very creative with glued-on Legos when he was little and manga illustrations during the years he was obsessed with all things Japanese. I was always mystified by the imagery of racecars and Harajuku girls, however, and wondered how they related to Mother’s Day. I have also received many IOUs for housecleaning, meal cooking, dog walking, weed pulling, car washing, etc., and usually get a bar or two of my favorite soaps, lavender and verbena. In other words, he was raised up right, if I do say so myself. 

When he asked what I wanted for Mother’s Day this year, I told him I’d like a paragraph to complete this column. I assured him it needn’t be sappy or emotional. Such expressions make him extremely uncomfortable, but I would like it to reflect his wit and humor.

A few years ago I decided that the greatest gift I have ever received came into this world on Aug. 13, 1987, at 2:30 p.m., eight pounds, six ounces, 21 inches of Adrian William Taylor, sound of wind and limb. So now we celebrate Mother’s Day by me cooking for him. Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty of weed pulling, mulch layering, and lilac planting on that day by the manly offspring!

The earliest, earliest celebrations celebrating mothers are believed to have begun with the ancient Greeks and Romans, who worshipped the mother goddesses Rhea and Cybele. In spring in Rome a festival called Megalensia was held to celebrate Cybele, “mistress of wild nature, a healer, and goddess of fertility and protectress in time of war.” These festivals involved a good bit of bloodletting, twirling around, castration, and sacrifices, so let’s be glad those days are over.

The origins of our Mother’s Day go back to the days before the Civil War. Ann Reeves Jarvis of West Virginia, created Mother’s Day work clubs to help teach women how to care for their children. In 1868 she organized Mothers Friendship Day, in an effort to care for and unite former Confederate and Union soldiers.

The abolitionist and suffragette Julia Ward Howe wrote a Mother’s Day proclamation (not to mention “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”) urging women to help promote world peace.

When Ann Reeves Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter Anna Jarvis proposed a specific Mother’s Day to acknowledge the sacrifices mothers made for their children. With backing from John Wanamaker of the Wanamaker department stores in Philadelphia, the first official Mother’s Day was celebrated in May 1908. She encouraged florists to sell white carnations in honor of mothers who had died and pink or red for those living. Over the ensuing years, she started letter-writing campaigns, lobbied politicians, and by 1914 had convinced President Woodrow Wilson to sign a measure establishing the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day. 

Ironically, Ms. Jarvis (who never married nor had any children) came to dislike the commercialization of the day and spent her remaining years filing lawsuits and badmouthing florists, candy makers, and even charities. She died penniless in a sanitarium.

The words my son sent me were not the funny and witty musings I had expected and asked for, nor are they sappy. They are heart-wrenching and reminded me of the things we have survived together: my cancer (22 years clean), divorce, moves, being kind of broke sometimes, a bad car accident, and the things we continue to endure together, like the death of his father three years ago from pancreatic cancer.

Food is the thread throughout his passage as it is throughout our lives. He makes me sound like a hero, but I’m not. I’m just a mom.

“Food has always been central to my mom’s life and livelihood — and by extension, my mom and I. Good times, dark times, lean times — a delicious meal or snack were never far removed from these periods. I remember the delicious, impossibly juicy home-cooked ‘chicken-in-a-bag,’ a staple throughout my middle school years. Her homemade Lunchable snack pack I got after leg surgery in sixth grade (healthier than the real thing, and with identifiable ingredients!). The peanut butter and jelly sandwich she made for me after we were in a serious car accident, just minutes after she got out of the hospital with a badly injured leg. These still resonate with me today as a testament to her toughness and love.”

“Most memorable in recent years was an epic Edna Lewis Southern spread for my 27th birthday. All of the amazing qualities that inhabit my mother’s being — fierce passion, limitless kindness, humor, boundless creativity, and energy, were all evident on that table of ham biscuits, watermelon rind pickles, and deviled eggs.”

“I love my mom. My mom is the best. I mean, so is yours . . . but mine especially.”

Click for recipes

For decades, serious foodies have been coming to the East End to partake of the simple pleasures of its summer produce and seafood. Later, they showed up at harvest time for its wine tastings and fine restaurants. More recently, they have left the city to live here year round and produce their own organic food products, such as heirloom wheat, honey, beer, distilled spirits, and fermented vegetables.

This year’s Food Lab Conference, to be held at Stony Brook Southampton the weekend of June 9, will celebrate this dynamic nature of food, both nationally and close to home, from 1970 through the near future. Speakers will include Bobby Flay, Michel Nischan, and David Barber.  

On Friday, a V.I.P. reception at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Science on Shinnecock Bay will welcome major donors, panelists, and other grandees with cocktails, and a seafood bar. A discussion with Mr. Flay and a general reception will follow. He will discuss his own take on food, cooking, and food television, where he has become famous as one of its earliest and continuing stars.  

Mr. Barber, with his brother Dan Barber, owns Blue Hill, a 138-acre family farm in Great Barrington, Mass. The farm became the inspiration for restaurants in Greenwich Village and at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Westchester County, where he is a founding partner. Both Blue Hill restaurants have been honored with the James Beard Outstanding Restaurant Award. He is also an “angel investor,” providing seed money to start-up food and hospitality companies. His talk will be focused on future food trends and the role of new technologies in guiding them.

A chef and leader in the sustainable food movement — and another James Beard Foundation Award winner — Mr. Nischan is the founder, president, and chief executive of Wholesome Wave, a nonprofit that increases access to healthy food in low-income areas. He is also a founder of the Chefs Action Network, and a founder and partner in the former Dressing Room Restaurant with Paul Newman, the actor, food marketer, and benefactor, who died in 2008. He will discuss food activism.

Participants in panels or other events will include Tanya Steel, the founder of the Obama White House Kids Healthy Cooking initiative; Florence Fabricant, an author and New York Times food writer; Alex Prud’homme, a biographer of Julia Child; Leslie Merinoff, the founder of Matchbook Distillery, and Claudia Fleming, the chef and owner of the North Fork Table and Inn. 

Panel discussions will address the history of and recent trends in restaurants, home cooking, beverages, and nutrition. Cheryl Stair, of the South Fork caterer Art of Eating, will be the chef for the gala dinner on Saturday. Hamptons Aristocrat, Martine Abitbol, and Bex Waffles food truck will provide other food for the conference. 

This year, the organizers have restructured the conference to free up Sunday for relaxing or other personal pursuits with all activities and events taking place on Friday and Saturday only.

Discounted early-bird tickets will be on sale at the Food Lab website through Monday for $100 for general admission. After that, the price for the weekend rises to $150. Discounted tickets for students and farmers are available for $75. The V.I.P. cocktail party costs $2,500.

This article has been updated from the print version to include a recent change to the Food Lab conference's schedule. Bobby Flay, who was originally scheduled to speak at the V.I.P. reception, will now speak to all conference participants on June 9.

All kinds of fresh produce are coming into season, and farm stands and farmers markets are reopening for the year to sell the bounty. 

The East Hampton Farmers Market had its inaugural day on Friday and will continue weekly from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on North Main Street, while the Springs Farmers Market begins its season on Saturday outside Ashawagh Hall, where it will take place weekly at those same hours.

A new evening farmers market will begin June 1 on the grounds of Calvary Baptist Church in East Hampton and take place weekly from 5 to 8 p.m. through August.

The Balsam Farms farm stand on Town Lane in Amagansett opens for its 15th season today and will remain open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Early crops, such as asparagus, arugula, spinach, kale, radishes, and other greens are available now. The farm stand will also sell its own canned, pickled, and preserved foods, along with items from other East End food producers, including Carissa’s Breads, the Blue Duck Bakery, Mary’s Marvelous, and Mecox Bay Dairy. Eggs from Iacono Farm and Browder’s Birds will be available, along with Bee’s Needs honey, Joe and Liza’s ice cream, and more.

The farm still has community-supported agriculture memberships available for this season. 

At Felice’s 

Astro Pizza and Felice’s restaurant in Amagansett is offering weekday dinner specials for $15 and specials on the weekends for $17. Children up to age 12 dining with their families can, for $12, order a pizza and select toppings to customize it, tableside, before the pie goes back into the oven. During a hiatus over the winter, the restaurant was renovated, with 15 additional seats added to the dining area and the pizza parlor side of the restaurant reduced in size. 

Deals at 1770 House

The downstairs tavern at the 1770 House in East Hampton will continue to offer a $17.70 Thursday-night special through June. It includes a choice of a burger, meatloaf, Korean barbecue ribs, or chicken parmigiana. House wine is available by the glass for $9 and house beers for $5.

For three more weeks, until June 8, the main restaurant is also offering a three-course prix fixe on weekdays for $35. Neither deal will be available over Memorial Day weekend. 

Arbor Reopens

Arbor restaurant in Montauk reopens today for its second season and has added an outdoor bar and dining room this year. The outdoor bar, open Thursdays through Sundays beginning Memorial Day weekend, will feature specialty cocktails by mixologists from the Garret, a New York City-based cocktail purveyor. Arbor will serve dinner Thursdays through Mondays until mid-June, when it will adopt a seven-day-a-week schedule. 

Rosé a Go-Go

More than 50 rosé wines from Provence, Sancerre, California, Italy, Oregon, Corsica, Spain, Washington State, and other locations will be available for tasting at a spring preview at Wainscott Main Wine and Spirits on Saturday from 2 to 5 p.m. 

Here is the latest roundup of local celebrity cookbooks. One of them “Living Clearly,” is more of a healthy lifestyle with yoga instruction book by Hilaria Baldwin, the wife of the actor Alec Baldwin. Another is titled “Food Swings” and is by Jessica Seinfeld, philanthropist and wife of the comedian Jerry Seinfeld. The third is by Ina Garten, who is famous in her own right for her cooking, cookbooks, and television show, “Barefoot Contessa.” This is her 10th cookbook, titled “Cooking for Jeffrey.”

Ms. Baldwin’s book is full of the pictures you may have seen of her on Instagram, striking impossible poses in public places, sometimes looking like a petite Catwoman in six-inch-heeled boots, stretched across a fire escape high in the sky. Many pictures are of her with Alec and their babies, cozy and sweet. She is exceptionally beautiful and her book is well written. It is basically an instruction manual on how to apply the five principles of yoga (perspective, breathing, grounding, balance, and letting go) to all aspects of your life. 

She suggests that in order to have a healthy relationship with food (ruh-roh!) you need to follow five similar principles, which she calls the Five Big Ideas: Choose quality, green your plate, make friends with fat, nix the tricky snacks, and don’t forget to hydrate. It turns out that Hilaria, for a good part of her young life (20 years of it), suffered from bulimia. She says “in all my years of teaching, I have yet to find one person who has always had a completely healthy relationship with food,” and “it took me years to develop a clear and healthy relationship with eating.” It’s a distressing revelation, but it should be no surprise to any of us that many professional ballet dancers, gymnasts, models, and other athletes suffer from eating disorders.

The section of her book that is about food is well balanced and has some tasty sounding recipes. She does not shy away from the use of plenty of garlic and lemons and spices to make things interesting. The chile-lime dressing looks like it would be good on anything, and especially good as a marinade for fish right before you pop it on the grill. While all the recipes are healthy, there are some creative twists, like a vegetarian version of hearty shepherd’s pie, a riff on paella, and a decadent (kinda) carrot cake with coconut cream icing. While most of the book is about yoga and has detailed photos of poses, it is also a warm and revealing book  about Ms. Baldwin’s life and how she has learned how to “live clearly.” Brava.

Ina Garten’s 10th tome, “Cooking for Jeffrey,” is pretty much like most of her other cookbooks, which is a good thing for her diehard fans. The housewife in Ohio will always be able to find the ingredients for these recipes: chicken, chicken, steak, veg, apples, and other supermarket staples. What gives the book its charm are the stories about her meeting her husband of almost 50 years (they met when she was sixteen), their courtship, their early life together, their high-powered careers in Washington, D.C., and her decision to open the first Barefoot Contessa shop in Westhampton Beach, all moves and actions that her husband fully supported. She calls him “the first feminist I ever knew.” Their love story is genuine; the spark and curiosity remain bright.

But will you find any new and exciting recipes in this volume? I’m sorry to say that I did not. In almost every other Barefoot Contessa cookbook I have dog-eared a page and thought “that looks amazing, I can’t wait to try that dish.” This one is certainly a good book, and if you are a collector of her books, as I am, you will perhaps find a new way to bake a chicken, roast a ribeye steak, poach a lobster, or assemble a shrimp salad.

Of the three books, I must confess that Jessica Seinfeld’s “Food Swings” was my favorite. The concept is clever: The first half of the book is virtuous recipes and the second half has somewhat more indulgent dishes. She preaches moderation, which is really the only thing you need to know about food and nutrition. Moderation. Preach, sister.

When I turned to the first page and was greeted by a pan of frosted, swirly, homemade cinnamon buns, I said, “Be still my heart” and “Where is scratch ’n’ sniff when you need it?”

Ms. Seinfeld’s first books had cumbersome titles like “Deceptively Delicious, Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food,” and “Double Delicious! Good, Simple Food for Busy Complicated Lives.” “Food Swings” is a good title. Get it? Like mood swings? 

The Virtue half of the book has riffs on popular foods of the moment like kale salad and Brussels sprouts. Onions and almonds go into the kale to make it better, and toasted hazelnuts and Parmesan cheese perk up the Brussels sprouts

Growing up with a working mother, Jessica learned to cook and help feed the family at an early age. The anecdotes about her granny are hilarious. Granny had no tolerance for “food allergies” and “was big with the eye roll when it came to food issues.” Cocktail hour at the grandparents included NPR on the radio, many guests coming and going, and conversations so engaging that sometimes they forgot to get around to dinner. “These evenings instilled in me a love of gregarious company, great food and good booze.”

The Virtue section also has vegetarian meatballs that look very tasty and a dish called “sp’eggs” a baked spinach, egg, and cheese combo that I’m going to try very soon. The Vice section, however, already has some dog-eared pages: salad with crispy prosciutto, green enchiladas made with fresh poblano peppers, lemon macaroon pie, coconut rum cake, crispy chorizo rice with crisp eggs, peach and sriracha chicken over coconut rice. . . .

When Ms. Seinfeld first started dating Jerry, he wanted to take her out for dinner. She demured, saying she’d rather cook for him. “You cook?!” he exclaimed. Yes, she can, and yes, she does.

I enjoyed all three books. Ms. Baldwin’s for her touching story and Ms. Garten’s to add to the collection. “Food Swings,” though, will be the one getting the most use and spatters of stain in my kitchen.

Click for recipes

A new evening farmers market will open next Thursday and take place weekly from 5 to 8 p.m. on the grounds of Calvary Baptist Church in East Hampton. 

The farmers market at the Hayground School on Mitchell Lane in Bridgehampton opens tomorrow and can be visited weekly through Sept. 1 from 3 to 6:30 p.m. 

Now Open

Wolffer Kitchen has opened in Amagansett Square, where the Meeting House used to be, and is serving dinner nightly. There is a salad menu, a tapas menu, “chilled and raw” selections, wood-oven pizzas, a selection of “veggies and legumes” sides, and five main courses to choose from: fluke, scallops, sirloin steak, salmon, or wild shrimp. 

At East Hampton Point, which opens this holiday weekend, Craig Atwood, who served as the restaurant’s chef from 2008 to 2010, has returned this year and revamped the menu. On the raw bar menu are a locally caught ceviche with pineapple, coconut milk, and chiles, tuna poke, and steak tartare with quail egg, spring onion, and wild mushroom.  Small plates can be ordered — a smoked bluefish paté, blue crab toast, grilled Spanish octopus, salads, and Berkshire pork ribs. Among the entree selections are roasted Atlantic skate, East End bouillabaisse, strip steak, and wild mushroom risotto. 

Beginning today, East Hampton Point will be serving dinner Thursdays through Sundays starting at 5 p.m., and lunch starting at noon on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. The hours will expand in late June. Sunday nights are reggae nights, with live music from 6 to 9, beginning with the Dan Bailey Tribe this week, when there will also be a $45 pig roast dinner special that includes a Montauk Brewing Company draft.

In Montauk, Solé East is kicking off the summer season at its Backyard Restaurant with live music throughout the weekend. Marcello and Ludmilla will play bossa nova during a poolside brunch to be served on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Rosé Soirée

Dan’s Taste of Summer culinary events begin this weekend with Dan’s Rosé Soirée on Sunday at the Southampton Arts Center on Job’s Lane from 5 to 8 p.m. There will be more than 30 types of rosé to taste, and food from top chefs and restaurants including Baron’s Cove, Loaves and Fishes, and the East Pole. An after-party featuring Rock Angel rosé will take place from 8 to 10 p.m. Tickets are $125 or $185, which includes the after-party. A limited number of tickets to the after-party only are available for $85 each. All can be ordered online. 

New at Montauk Yacht Club

The new restaurant at the Montauk Yacht Club, called Coast Kitchen, is headed by chef Richard Hebson. Most recently of First and South in Greenport, he is a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts and a veteran country club chef. Beginning this weekend, the yacht club will open its Sunset Pier outdoor lounge, where cocktails and light bites will be served. The area overlooks a stage where bands will perform. 

Harbor East Is Back

Harbor East is opening tonight on Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton. Featuring “contemporary farm-to-table cuisine,” according to a press release, it is a project of two New York City restaurateurs, James Willis and Andrew Mole, with Jason Hook as the chef. Mr. Hook has worked under several well-known chefs, including Alain Ducasse, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Philippe Legendre. The restaurant, at the site of a series of nightclubs, will have dancing starting at about 11 p.m. and will serve dinner Fridays through Sundays for now. 

Bid on a Fire-Roasted Meal

Opening bids are $2,500 for a June 23 lunch for 10 to be prepared and served outdoors at the Sylvester Manor farm on Shelter Island by Fire Roasted Catering, a Berkshires-based concern. The meal will be tailored to the winning bidder’s personal tastes and served family style, from starters through dessert. It will be paired with local wines. 

Bids can be placed, in $150 increments, by calling the farm office, through Friday, June 2, at 4 p.m. The winner, who will be notified by phone, can choose to work with the chef to forage and harvest fresh produce, learn open-fire cooking techniques by working in the field kitchen, or simply sit back and enjoy. The auction is a fund-raiser for the Sylvester Manor Annual Fund. Winning bid amounts above $2,000 will be tax deductible. 

Lulu Kitchen and Bar

126 Main Street

Sag Harbor

631-725-0900

Seven days

Lulu Kitchen and Bar opened on Sag Harbor’s Main Street a few weeks ago and I like it very much. 

It is big and beautiful with an open kitchen, a wood-burning oven, and a trellised patio in the back. The space has always had a long, narrow railroad car feel to it but now it has graduated from the Acela to the Orient Express. It has rustic wood floors, exposed brick walls, skylights, and lots of smoky mirrors. There are banquettes, comfortable leather chairs, and a long zinc bar.

The open kitchen, which is about midway through the restaurant, has dramatic displays of the house-made breads, and tall glass cylinders filled with heads of cauliflower, kind of like those restaurants with lobster tanks where you point to the crustacean you’d like to eat. Whole roasted cauliflower is the “bloomin’ onion” of the moment, and this place does a real showstopper version of it.

The bread served before the meal is delicious and chewy and dusty with residual flour. For appetizers we ordered the cauliflower monster, tomato tartare, burrata, Bibb lettuce salad, and some Montauk Pearl oysters. 

The cauliflower comes out on a parchment-paper-covered platter with a big ol’ steak knife in the middle of it. Quelle dramatique! The menu says it’s enough for two to three people but I would say four. It is coated with tahini and white balsamic vinaigrette, drizzled with mint oil, topped with some roasted Long Island grapes, and sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds and microgreens. It isn’t crunchy on the outside, but it does have some satisfying char on it. The slightly smoky, earthy cauliflower pairs well with the tangy grapes. The whole thing was delicious, and there was still enough to take home.

The tomato tartare was a more diminutive portion, beautifully plated with marinated bits of tomato, roasted cherry tomatoes, tiny nibs of string beans, and more microgreens. The burrata was a perfect room temperature blob of milky goodness with more roasted cherry tomatoes, fava beans, capers, and some basil pesto. The Bibb lettuce salad was a tall, generous mound of whole delicate leaves dressed with Lulu Kitchen’s white balsamic vinaigrette which is creamy and a pale shade of pink. Bless you, Lulu Kitchen, for serving this almost forgotten salad green. 

The Montauk Pearl oysters (love these) came with a dish of cocktail sauce and traditional mignonette. The mig­nonette could have been better. It was too sharp, as in pure vinegar, and lacked shallots. Perhaps it just hadn’t been stirred up enough before serving.

For entrees we tried the trufata pizza, vegetable pot au feu, roast chicken, cowboy ribeye steak, and a side order of mac ’n’ cheese. The pizza was very good: thin, blistered, kinda crisp, with mushrooms, stracciatella (truffled), arugula, and a few rings of pickled red onion. 

The vegetable pot au feu intrigued me, and I have to say it did not disappoint. The vegetables — broccoli, carrots, fennel, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower, and fava beans — were artfully arranged in a bowl of rich, meaty broth. I’m guessing it was a meat broth because it was better than any vegetable broth I’ve ever had. There was a somewhat superfluous dab of whole grain mustard on the rim of the bowl, and the menu said there was a smoked aioli as well, but I couldn’t detect it. I loved it nonetheless. 

The roast chicken was a bit of a disappointment because it was way, way overcooked and dry. The potato gratin served with it almost made up for it, for it was a creamy delight. The cowboy steaks were also a bit disappointing. The meat was tender and flavorful but under, or perhaps even, unseasoned. The French fries were hand cut and excellent, and the frizzled romaine leaves had a delicious lemony dressing. The black pepper sauce served with the steak was good but more like a sweet jus than a peppercorn sauce. The mac ’n’ cheese side dish was rich and creamy with a hint of smoked gouda.

The restaurant was hopping on the night of our visit and handling it quite well considering how young it is. The charming manager, Joshua, was warm and welcoming. 

The prices are moderate to expensive. Appetizers and raw bar items range from $12 to $95. (That’s for the seafood platter, which can serve three people or more.) Entrees are $24 to $54, pizzas are $18 to $23, sides are $9, and desserts are $9 to $18.

For dessert we tried a selection of sorbets, molten chocolate cake, and a lemon yuzu tart. The sorbets — we tried passion fruit, melon, and coconut — were good. They were served on a tasty bed of shortbread gravel and garnished with a few berries. The chocolate cake, as is often the case, had been baked past the molten stage and had reached the fully cooked yet still moist stage. It had good flavor, though, and the salted caramel ice cream and dabs of caramel sauce on the plate were good. The lemon yuzu tart was the best of all and as pretty as could be. Yuzu is an aromatic citrus fruit, similar to grapefruit or Meyer lemon, common in Japan and Korea. This tart had a crisp crust, a very tart lemon-yuzu curd filling, and was adorned with whipped créme fraiche and creme fraiche ice cream.

Most of my guests, handsome young fellows each and every one, said they would come back, but probably just for drinks and appetizers. One said he’d come back for the great pizza and that it was a welcome addition to Sag Harbor. I’ll be back because I live in the ’hood, they’re going to be open year round, and I found enough divine and interesting dishes to go back for. Often.

A new Greek restaurant called Calissa will open on Montauk Highway in Water Mill this weekend, taking over the space occupied a few years back by  Trata East and a slew of short-lived followers.

Inspired by the island of Mykonos, Calissa was previewed in April in an upstairs room at Amali, a Mediterrean-style Greek restaurant in Manhattan, with James Mallios, its managing partner, as host. Mr. Mallios is among the partners also responsible for the New York City restaurants Periyali and Il Cantinori. Unlike the transitory boites of recent summers on the South Fork, the group has signed a long-term lease, indicating a commitment to the area.

For Water Mill, Mr. Mallios promised a Mediterranean piazza vibe and an open-air feeling in the bar and patio. The aesthetic and design will be simple, he said, “inspired by the classic beauty of Mykonos.” 

From the Amali menu, created by Dominic Rice, the executive chef who previously worked at Narcissa and Jean- Georges, foods were served at a long table family style, emphasizing both small and large plates. They included chunky takes on traditional Greek spreads, such as melizana, made from “blistered” eggplant, honey, and mint, and something called kafteri, with chunks of Greek cheese such as feta, and chiles, both served with stacks of warm pita.

A warm salad of grilled romaine lettuce with cherry tomatoes, kopanisti cheese, lamb bacon, and walnuts was a creative take on the familiar wedge. Spit-roasted baby carrots on yogurt with pea tendrils and a surprise platter of tender octopus with potatoes — la plancha — rounded out the appetizers.

The entrees were a lobster bucatini, dry-aged lamb with tzatziki, green beans, and rosemary, and a salt-baked whole red snapper presented in a crust and served in small chunks with dill, olive oil, and lemon.

An indication of what to expect at Calissa might come from a 2014 two-fork Michelin Guide rating of Periyali, which noted it had “maintained not only its popularity but a high standard of cuisine and service” for more than two decades. Similarly, Frank Bruni, in The New York Times in 2005, said, “If you remember what Periyali was like three years or 10 years or even 15 years ago, you know what it’s like today.” That’s a feat few restaurants in New York City and on the South Fork can claim.

Calissa will be open daily at 5 p.m. during the summer, but closed on Tuesdays in May, June, September, and October.

Mark Twain wrote, in “Innocents Abroad,” that “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” 

“I was a good student. I comprehend things. I understand very well. Better than, I think, almost anybody,” Donald Trump said to the National Sheriff’s Association regarding his interpretation of United States immigration law.

“I’ll tell you the whole history of it,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News. “So when Trump first announced it, he said ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up. He said ‘put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.’ ”

A five-course dinner at Almond restaurant in Bridgehampton recently focused on dishes from the six countries covered by the president’s travel ban. They were accompanied by four wines and a vermouth from Channing Daughters Winery. The dinner was conceived by Jason Weiner, the restaurant’s co-owner and executive chef, and prepared by its newly anointed chef de cuisine, Jeremy Blutstein. It was sold out. It was tremendous and huge, hugely successful, and beautiful.

At the beginning, Mr. Blutstein said, “This is a celebration of food from mother countries. Food is bond. People celebrate with food when a baby is born, when someone graduates, and at the other end, people gather and bond around food when someone dies. People have to let go of anger. If you walk around being angry, everybody loses. Here we have friends in the kitchen and friends in the dining room. Nights like this are what it’s all about.” 

He then admitted that in Mr. Weiner’s absence he had taken the liberty of plundering and pillaging the restaurant basement’s supply of last summer’s Pike’s Farm tomatoes and homemade harissa. The menu also featured nettles, ground dent corn, carrots, and potatoes from Quail Hill Farm, wheat from Amber Waves, Marilee Foster’s radishes, arugula from the Bridgehampton School’s Killer Bees garden, and micro-greens from Brendan Davison’s Good Water Farm.

Served family-style at communal tables, the meal began with fattoush, representing Syria and Iran, a salad of greens, sugar snap peas, radishes, pomegranate seeds, toasted pita bread, fennel fronds, and little rounds of falafel. It was lemony, herbal, and minty, with a hint of cardamom. The 2016 Mudd West Vineyards syrah was an excellent match for the variety of flavors.

The next course was salaat jazar, a carrot salad from Sudan, spicy with harissa, a tahini dressing, pistachios, pickled ramps, arugula, and a sprinkling of purple shiso leaves. This was accompanied by a 2016 Petillent Naturel.

When Christopher Tracy of Channing Daughters stood up to speak, he did so with the fervor of a Pentecostal preacher. “Channing Daughters Winery steers away from politics and religion. But these are interesting and different times so you have to be engaged. As Hamilton said to Burr, ‘I’d rather be divisive than indecisive.’ ” He talked about how much fun it was to pair the wines with spicy foods, calling the sparkling rosés “joyful with a touch of sweetness.”

When asked why she and her husband, Chris Jeffrey, were attending the dinner, Laura Luciano said, “People are dying, seed banks are being blown up. Jason [Weiner] is bringing awareness to the foods of each of these countries. If we can’t go to them, Jason is bringing their flavors to us and educating us.”

The carrot salad was followed by mafaiya, a fish stew from Yemen, prepared with monkfish, last summer’s tomatoes, sunchokes, and Quail Hill nettles. It was one of the best courses of the meal, the monkfish cooked just enough, the nettles softened to spinach-like silkiness, the sunchokes adding sweetness, and the broth having a hint of saffron in it. This was matched with a 2016 cabernet sauvignon from Mudd Vineyard.

Throughout the meal, Almond’s co-owner Eric Lemonides was serving dishes and alighting on each table with the speed of a hummingbird. As the guests tucked into the fourth course of chicken and lamb kebabs representing Libya, Mr. Tracy told us why Almond is near and dear to his heart. “These dinners remind us of why we get together to enjoy food. Look behind the scenes: Diego, Steve, Nick, Jeff, all of the staff, they get it.” 

I visited the kitchen before the meal began, and the chefs and cooks were remarkably calm considering they were about to serve five courses in rapid succession to 75 guests. Mr. Blutstein introduced me to the “handsome S.O.B.s” who had prepared our meal, Miguel Solano, Leo Cordova, Fabian Juela, and Andrew Mahoney. Mr. Weiner was absent, working at a dinner in the city.

For dessert we had kac kac, a Somalian beignet topped with local lavender honey. This was served with Channing Daughters Vervain Version 3 Batch 3, a vermouth full of mysterious and intriguing local herbs and spices.

If you are familiar with Almond and the folks behind it, you already know that they frequently host dinners for friends in need, artists and writers, community groups, and more. Food is bond, as Mr. Blutstein said, and this dinner also provided some serious food for thought.

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First of all, I have to admit that certain German words bring out the inner child in me, and that inner child is akin to Beavis and Butthead. Millennial boys will know what I mean. 

“Beavis and Butthead,” an animated sitcom created by Mike Judge in 1992, ran for many years and was made into a movie. The two characters are disgusting young boys who are titillated by any word that sounds dirty, and react to it by snickering “heh heh, you said [insert potentially dirty word here].”

I spent a few days in Vienna, Austria, last week, without a doubt one of the world’s most beautiful and culturally rich cities in the world, and found myself giggling over such words as “gute fahrt,” “kartoffelpuffer,” and “botschafter,” which simply mean “good trip,” “hash browns,” and “ambassador.” But I digress before I’ve even begun. . . .

Vienna has a reputation for having the best desserts in the world, which is why a most thoughtful fellow invited me. The sachertorte could be the most famous. Other dishes of great renown are tafelspitz, or boiled beef; weiner schnitzel, which is deep-fried breaded veal; mohnnudeln, big potato gnocchi-like noodles covered in a sugary poppy seed goop; rindfleischsalat, beef salad made with leftover tafelspitz, and lots and hams and cheeses and dense dark breads. In other words, the traditional foods are gout-inducing, cholesterol-raising heavy fare that nobody should be eating on a daily basis.

Because I had accrued oodles of miles on my credit card, I was able to travel for $0 in business class, an experience I have had only once before in 62 years. “Oh, boy,” I thought, “this means I can hang out in the lounge of Austrian Airlines!” Their motto is “the charming way to fly,” which is a charming motto.

Airport lounges are as quiet as tombs, have comfortable seating, free booze, and often (so I hear) splendid buffets. This lounge had cold cuts, potato chips, macaroni salad, Chex mix, candy, and pizza. It was on a par with hospital food. I exited the lounge and found a stall called New York/Istanbul and enjoyed a gozleme, a flat bread stuffed with spinach and spices. Delicious . . . and green.

Things improved on the airplane, which had a “chef” taking meal orders. When researching the airline I came upon a travel story in which the writer actually believed the “chefs” on Austrian Airlines were going back into a real kitchen to cook the meals to order. Not so. As most of us know, open flames are not a good idea up in the air in an airtight capsule. There were offerings of white asparagus soup, beef fillet, prawns, tortellini, a cheese trolley, and desserts. The Austrians are also big into coffee, so there was a whole coffee menu to choose from after the meal. The coffee is divine everywhere in Vienna, even at McDonald’s. (Yes, I got an espresso one morning at McDonald’s.)

I had a full day to explore before my friend Benson arrived, so I wandered around and had a lunch of huge white asparagus topped with diced tomatoes, accompanied by buttery, parsley potatoes, and a very large bowl of hollandaise. To top it off I ordered a side dish of Vulcano ham, a cured ham that is aged for six months, marinated with herbs, and smoked briefly with beechwood. Oof, good start.

On our first night we tried to muster up some enthusiasm to try traditional Viennese food and went looking for Plachutta, a restaurant with three locations throughout the city and renowned for its tafelspitz. We got lost and settled on a nice little Italian joint called Sole and had shredded raw artichoke and fennel salad, sea bass with a potato crust and sautéed spinach, followed by tart lemon and blood orange sorbets. This place was so good (and healthy) we went back again another night.

Our days were spent in museums — two full days at the Albertina, viewing much Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt and other artists of the Secessionist movement. We explored a farmer’s market where we found fraises des bois, tiny Alpine strawberries that are sweet and perfumy and very different from the larger ones we are used to. 

Most breakfasts were consumed in our hotel, where the buffet had a staggering array of more meats and cheeses; bircher muesli, a mixture of soaked oats with yogurt, nuts, and fruit; pretzel rolls; dense, dark, brown breads, and big jars of jams like sour cherry and gooseberry. Lunches were often at museum cafes, and they were excellent. At one I had a baked sweet potato topped with fresh porcini (also known as bolete) mushrooms, micro-greens, and a soy dressing. At another I had some darned good sushi. (Sorry folks, I just didn’t want to gain 10 pounds a day.) 

We fell in love with one of Vienna’s famous pastries called Esterhazy, similar to a Napoleon, which is composed of layers of hazelnut dacquoise (meringue) filled with buttercream, and topped with a sugar icing. The apple strudels everywhere were also delicious, and often served with vanilla sauce, because why should a rich dessert have to be served without more sugar and fat?

We spent one evening touring the local TV station ORF, and watching the evening news broadcast, which is five minutes long. Benson’s friend, a native Austrian named Christian, explained to us that Austria is a very relaxed, neutral country, welcoming to immigrants, and with very little fear of terrorism. Quite refreshing considering its history.

By our third evening (I only had four days), I forced my host to indulge my need to try the traditional foods. We found one of Plachutta’s locations and tucked into weiner schnitzel and the boiled beef tafelspitz. It was far better than it sounded. You choose which cut of beef you would like (rump, tongue, shoulder, whatever), and it is presented in a beautiful copper pot full of broth with carrots and leeks. You begin with the broth, which comes with either noodles or sliced pancakes. 

It was insanely good. The accompaniments are applesauce with horseradish, shredded fried potatoes, and chive sauce that is made with milk-soaked white bread, then turned into a mayonnaise emulsion with vegetable oil and lots of chopped chives. The meat is cut superthin and is very tender, like the best brisket you’ve ever had. There is a thick bone full of marrow in the broth, which is meant to be slathered on toasted brown bread and sprinkled with salt and pepper. This was the best marrow I’ve ever tasted. Alas, Benson’s weiner schnitzel, while tender, was merely two slabs of oily, breaded veal with a wedge of lemon.

On our last night we tried a Turkish restaurant surrounded by weapons stores. It was so bad (smoking allowed inside, pee yew!) we left after trying only the hummus, fried zucchini, and falafel.

The next and last stop, the famed Hotel Sacher, was ground zero for that famous sachertorte. I’m going to be sacrilegious here and say I was underwhelmed. It is a somewhat dry, not very chocolaty cake with a layer of apricot jam and a somewhat gritty chocolate glaze. Truth be told, I would take a French fruit tart or éclair over this anytime. 

The architecture, music, art, people, and parks of Vienna were truly wonderful, but I did not come back thinking, “Hot diggity, I can’t wait to try that recipe at home!” I prefer colorful and crunchy vegetables, things that have spice and zest, healthful things. Fish and rice, not noodles and cream.

It was a glorious trip, however, and I would go back in a heartbeat. Besides the beauty of the city, I became enamored of the language, which often combines several words to create a new word and meaning. For instance “kummerspeck” literally translates to “grief bacon,” that syndrome many of us have experienced of overeating to soothe us after a breakup or job loss or stress. “Torschlusspanik” means “closing gate panic,” that feeling of being afraid you’re missing out on things in life and you’d better hurry up and do them. “Erklarungsnot,” which brings Beavis and Butthead back to mind (heh-heh, you said ‘snot!’) literally translates as “explanation poverty,” and is used to describe dishonest politicians, children who lie about their homework, and various other liars and cheaters. That word will come in handy every day back here in America. 

Perhaps my favorite word of all, because it relates to food, is a word regarding laws and the labeling of beef. I have no flipping idea what it means literally but here goes: rindfleischetikettierungsuberwachungsaufgabenubertragungsges. 

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