A new hotspot at the Montauk dock will open next Thursday. The old Salivar’s space has been taken over by West Lake Clam and Chowder House, and the new season is set to begin with its signature sushi bar and full menu. For now, dinner will be served from Thursday through Monday, and lunch offered as well from Friday through Sunday. Breakfast hours will be added later in the season.

    Across the harbor in the chowder house’s previous space, the old West Lake fishing lodge, Larry Kolar, formerly of the Backyard at Sole East, is opening the West Lake Fish House later this month. It will serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

    Tomorrow night will bring the seasonal reopening of another Montauk harbor stalwart, the Dock.

Empanadas Always

    Gula Gula Empanadas, locally made artisanal treats that have heretofore been sold only at farmers markets, are now available at the Smokin’ Wolf barbecue takeout shop on Pantigo Road in East Hampton. The shop will offer two “empanadas of the day” for takeout or eating on site, Wednesdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

    Among the varieties of empanadas, sold fresh or frozen and in standard or hors d’oeuvre sizes, are chicken with roasted poblanos and tomatillos, chipotle puree, and spices; albacore tuna and flounder with roasted red pepper, kalamata olives, and tomatoes, and a seasonal greens version featuring kale, swiss chard, and manchego cheese.

Cocktail Tips

    The next in a series of tasting workshops at Wainscott Main Wine and Spirits will take place on Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. “Mixology 101: What Makes a Special(ty) Cocktail” will be presented by J.R. Grisch of Opici Family Distributors. Admission to each of the weekly sessions is $10. Those interested may sign up by email to wainscottmain@gmail. com.

For Passover

    The first night of Passover is April 14, and Charlotte Sasso at Stuart’s Seafood Market in Amagansett has begun taking orders for holiday dishes, from her homemade gefilte fish to matzoh ball soup, chopped liver, and haroset.

    Stoves continue to fire up in restaurant kitchens that had gone cold for the winter season. Friday, April 4, brings the reopening of the Dock in Montauk.

    South Edison restaurant in Montauk, which is not quite ready to open for the season, has a sister restaurant now in New York City, called Bo’s Kitchen and Bar Room. It is at 6 West 24th Street. As with South Edison, Todd Mitgang is a partner and the chef.

Fresh Eggs

    The folks at Round Swamp Farm in East Hampton have hens a-laying, and fresh eggs may be ordered by sending a text to 516-443-6834. The eggs can then be picked up at 160 Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton. They cost $6 a dozen.

Weeknight Specials

    Weeknight $19.95 specials at little/red in Southampton are as follows: duck grilled cheese on Mondays, chef’s choice on Tuesdays, veal Milanese on Wednesdays, and hanger steak frites on Thursdays.

    At the red/bar brasesrie, also in Southampton, prix fixe choices offered Sunday through Thursday nights, and on Fridays between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m., include two courses for $30 or three for $35. Among the appetizer choices are cornmeal-crusted calamari, local oysters on the half shell, and braised pork belly with shaved apples, ricotta salata, and a maple-cider vinegar glaze. Entrée choices are truffled chicken breast with wild mushroom risotto and French beans, miso-glazed tilefish, and bucatini with littleneck clams. Choices are subject to change.

Prime Rib Night

    Thursdays are prime rib night at the Bell & Anchor restaurant on Noyac Road in Noyac. A special featuring an appetizer and an eight-ounce portion of prime rib, with vegetables and potatoes, is $34; the price for a 12-ounce portion is $39. Dessert can be added for an extra $5.

Tried and True

    Fresno in East Hampton also has $30 and $35 prix fixe choices, and offers them all night on Sundays through Thursdays, and on Fridays and Saturdays from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Tax and gratuity are extra. Among the menu items that could be offered are, to start, chicken liver pate with pickled beets and rye toast points, smoky chipotle and chickpea hummus with grilled flatbread and marinated olives, and a salad of baby greens with pears, Manchego cheese, pumpkin seeds, and sherry vinaigrette. Entrees to be found could include chicken Milanese, rigatoni Bolognese, Fresno burgers, and mussels and fries.

Living Room Weekly

    The Living Room restaurant at c/o the Maidstone inn in East Hampton has introduced the Living Room Weekly, a different three-course special for $35 each week. The menu will be offered all night every night except on Saturdays, when it will be available only until 6:30 p.m. Sample choices include salmon tartare, biff a la Lindstrom, a main course featuring ground beef, red beets, capers, roasted fingerling potatoes, garlic butter, and bordelaise sauce, and vanilla ice cream with warm raspberries for dessert.

    Hamptons restaurant week is in full swing now, and three-course specials for $27.95 will continue at more than a dozen local eateries through Sunday. A full list can be found at hamptonsrestaurantweek.com.

    The irony of watching “12 Years a Slave” the night before embarking on a little tour of Charleston, S.C., was not lost on me. Nor was the fact that William Tecumseh Sherman is one of my great, great, great uncles, a fact that I may or may not have proudly shouted from one of the city’s many church steeples had I imbibed enough bourbon. But this was more of a food and architecture tour of that lovely city.

    The trip began as my treat for a good friend who has done a bucket load of work for me over the past year. It ended up being a trip with five kids in their 20s and four grownups. The organizing of meals and walking forays was like wrangling a basket of kittens. The weather, sadly, did not cooperate. It was in the 40s and raining sideways for three out of four days. But the food was a delight and a revelation.

    One of the best meals we had was our first lunch at Cru Cafe, a tiny place we stumbled upon near our hotel. Fried green tomatoes with pork belly croutons, Thai mussels, barbecue brisket, bread pudding. Oh, and salads, of course. Dinner that night was at the Peninsula Grill, a beautiful restaurant (brown velvet walls, portraits of dockworkers!) in our hotel. It is justifiably famous for its coconut cake, a multi-tiered marvel of whiteness and light. Oysters, veal, scallops, flounder, banana creme brulée. No vegetables!

    The foods and architecture of Charleston are similar to New Orleans, and the prices at the restaurants were shockingly reasonable. There were grits on every menu, biscuits, chicken and waffles, fried alligator, cream gravies, boiled peanuts, hush puppies, antelope, and oysters. Desserts are taken seriously, usually served in the form of a mile-high cake or dense and sweet pie.

    Charleston survived the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. Even pirates and hurricanes have not been able to destroy its antebellum mansions, gazillion churches, and Spanish-moss-draped trees. It is the seventh largest container port in the United Stages. The first golf game in America was played in Charleston and the first public college, museum, and playhouse are here. George Gershwin composed his opera “Porgy and Bess” while living on Folly Beach and Porgy and Bess are buried in the James Island Presbyterian Church graveyard. The state dance is the shag.

    We took a brief tour of a mansion-guest house on Charleston Harbor. As some members of the family were still living in parts of the house, our tour was a bit restricted and dare I say, creepy? The chintz and Victoriana everywhere gave me the vapors, or whatever it is that Southern belles faint from. Thank the Lord there were crystal bowls of Hershey’s kisses every three feet of the tour.

    From there we were off to Poogan’s Porch for more fried green tomatoes and she-crab soup. Poogan’s is named for a stray dog that just decided to live on the porch. The house is reportedly haunted by the ghost of a spinster who died within. The local police still receive so many calls about reported sightings of her that they totally ignore them. This place had the best biscuits, along with pimento cheese balls with green tomato jam, blackened catfish, and maple syrup that has been spiked with Texas Pete hot sauce.

    In walking around downtown Charles­­ton we observed quite a few signs saying, “No concealed weapons allowed inside.” According to the Huffington Post, a new law passed last month in the state allows people with “concealed-weapon permits to carry firearms in places that serve food or alcohol, as long as they don’t drink while inside.” Establishments can opt to ban them, but must prominently display a sign in their window to that effect.

    Quite a few shops would have decanters of bourbon at the ready and zinc tubs full of ice and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. And perhaps a pitcher of sweet tea or lemonade for the ladies. Garden and Gun magazine is a bible here, a glossy publication extolling the virtues of both.

    One of our best meals was at Hominy Grill, a simple but sophisticated little place where our friend Beanie’s daughter is a waitress. We got the royal treatment (free shrimp beignets with a tart, tomato salsa) and feasted on oyster soup, fried chicken livers, triggerfish, squash casserole, creamed mustard greens, Hummingbird cake, and the restaurant’s famous buttermilk pie. The tables are set with plastic bear honey dispensers and boiled peanuts. If you’ve never had boiled peanuts, they are hard to describe and not to everyone’s liking. The peanuts are soft and mushy within the shell, and have been boiled in very salty water. They have the texture of chestnuts but with a mild peanut flavor. Most of our basket of kittens loved them.

    There are a few culinary specialties that you can bring home: stone ground grits from Geechie Boy or Anson Mills, and Carolina yellow rice. There are sweetgrass baskets for sale in the outdoor markets and they are beautiful. The baskets were first woven by slaves from West Africa over 300 years ago and were used to store rice, produce, cotton, shellfish, clothing, sewing supplies, breads, and biscuits. Some members of the African-American community of Mount Pleasant still weave the baskets that start out green and smelling of sweet hay and dry to a pale, pretty beige.

    The meticulous preservation of Charleston gives one the feeling of having truly stepped back in time. The horse-drawn carriages and people who use words like “tawdry” and “holler” add to the atmosphere, along with ancient palms and houses the color of shrimp bisque. It’s like a cleaner New Orleans without the jazz. Best of all, the chefs and cooks of Charleston are preserving culinary history while bringing low country cuisine into the next century.

Click for recipes

    It’s that time of year again. Hamptons Restaurant week, which offers three-course prix fixe dinners for $27.95 at more than a dozen local eateries, will run from Sunday through March 30.

    Participating restaurants include Fresno, Nick & Toni’s, Race Lane, the 1770 House, and the Living Room in East Hampton. In Sag Harbor, the special will be offered at Muse in the Harbor and Bell & Anchor. Also participating will be Almond, Bobby Van’s, and Pierre’s in Bridgehampton; Gurney’s Inn in Montauk, and RedBar Brasserie, Tuscan House, Shippy’s Pumpernickles, and Le Chef in Southampton. A $19.95 option will be available at the last two.

    Specials will be offered nightly, but only until 7 p.m. on March 29. A full list of participating restaurants, including many on the North Fork, in Riverhead, and farther west can be found at hamptonsrestaurantweek.com.

For Food Entrepreneurs

    The Amagansett Food Institute will open South Fork Kitchens, a commercial kitchen that can be rented by small business owners, at Stony Brook Southampton later this spring.

    Local farmers and food producers will be able to rent the fully-equipped and licensed kitchen in four-hour blocks seven days a week and 24 hours a day, with an option of renting double blocks. Up to four businesses will be able to use the 3,000-square-foot space at one time.

    The center will be overseen by Carissa Waechter, who will also use the kitchen to make products for her company, Carissa’s Breads. Services to be provided will include group purchasing, delivery and shipping oversight, and processing and packing services for farmers’ produce. The Amagansett Food Institute also plans to partner with local government, nonprofit organizations, and business development professionals to offer accounting, legal, marketing, and technical services to kitchen users, and will be operating a farm-to-table cafe at the college campus where those who use the kitchen may provide products for sale.

    The food institute will sponsor a food handlers’ certificate class in the next few weeks. More information is available by sending an email to amagansettfood@ gmail.com.

On Wine

    The Parrish Art Museum’s Business Circle, Edible East End magazine, and the Long Island Wine Council will host a program on Long Island wines at the Water Mill museum tomorrow evening at 6. “How Do You Bottle Creativity?” will include a discussion by three winemakers, Kareem Massoud of Paumanok Vineyards, Barbara Shinn of Shinn Estate Vineyards, and Christopher Tracy of Channing Daughters, about what inspires their art. Tickets are $25, or $20 for museum members. Advance reservations have been recommended as space is limited.

Saturday for the Irish

    Indian Wells Tavern in Amagansett will help celebrants gear up for the Montauk St. Patrick’s Day parade on Sunday with a pre-parade party on Saturday from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. featuring specials on pints of Guinness, whiskey shots, and Jello shots. A D.J. will be on hand to provide the tunes. The cover charge is $5. The tavern serves lunch and dinner seven days a week from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.

East End Chefs

    A new series of East End Chefs events at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor will begin with a cooking class on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. with James Carpenter and Jamie D’Oliveira, the chef and general manager of Page at 63 Main in Sag Harbor. The meal to be prepared and served will include a brick-oven flatbread salad, roasted chicken with vegetables, and sticky toffee date cake with mascarpone cream for dessert. The cost is $20. Wine and water will be available for purchase. Space is limited, so advance reservations have been recommended, and can be made by calling the church.

New Pastry Chef

    In her new role as pastry chef for Honest Man Restaurants, Rachel Cronemeyer will oversee the desserts at Nick & Toni’s and Rowdy Hall in East Hampton, Townline BBQ in Saga­ponack, and La Fondita in Amagansett, as well as for Honest Catering and Nick & Toni’s Cafe in Manhattan.

    Ms. Cronemeyer, who attended the baking and pastry arts program at Suffolk Community College, interned at the North Fork Table and Inn, where she worked with Claudia Fleming, a James Beard Award-winning pastry chef, for more than three years. In 2012, she started her own company, Cronemeyer Cakes & Confections.

    Among the sweets to be added to the menus are a flourless chocolate cake, pear crostata, and bambolini — an almond cream, butterscotch gelato, and toasted almond concoction — at Nick & Toni’s, fried pecan pie and chocolate cake pops at Townline BBQ, and, at Rowdy Hall, warm pineapple tart, fruit caramel with rum ice cream, chocolate caramel popcorn trifle, flourless chocolate cake, and a peanut butter brownie sundae.

Spring Specials

    Two prix fixes will be offered at the Bell & Anchor in Sag Harbor on Sunday through Thursday all night as well as on Friday and Saturday between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. A two-course menu is $30, and three courses are $35. Among the menu choices are chowder, brandade, Caesar salad, fish of the day, moules frites, and flat iron steak frites.

    Thursday is pizza night at Fresh Hamptons in Bridgehampton, with a three-course pizza dinner offered for $18 plus tax and gratuity. The meal begins with Caesar salad, followed by a 12-inch organic whole wheat pizza and gelato or sorbet for dessert. A variety of toppings, including grilled eggplant, sauteed greens, Mecox Bay sausage, ricotta cheese, and soppressata, just to name a few, may be added for an additional $1 or $2 per item.

Bite of the Irish

    In honor of St. Patrick’s Day on Monday, Fresh Hamptons restaurant in Bridgehampton will offer a small plate of corned beef, cabbage, and potatoes, for $6 on its bar menu from 4 to 8 p.m. There will also be the usual daily happy hour specials on drinks (half price for house wines, tap beer, and other drinks), and bar food.

    At Rowdy Hall in East Hampton, St. Patrick’s-inspired a la carte lunch specials, a prix fix dinner, and drink specials will begin on Saturday and run through Monday, the holiday, and be offered again on March 23, which is the day of Montauk’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.

    A two-course $25 dinner special will include an appetizer and entrée, or an entrée and dessert, with main course choices to include corned beef and cabbage, bangers and mash, or shepherd’s pie. Desserts will be an Irish whiskey chocolate cake, or an “Irish car bomb float,” which is house-made whiskey ice cream floated in Guinness.

    Sammy’s restaurant in Montauk is reopening for the season tomorrow. In the St. Patrick’s Day spirit, the folks at the restaurant have offered congratulations to Paul Monte, who will be the grand marshal of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Montauk, and will offer an Irish prix fixe all week, with 20 percent of the proceeds from each dinner donated to the Friends of Erin.

And It Begins

    The coming season will bring, as it does annually in the East End food and restaurant biz, some new ventures. One of the first to be announced is Bay Kitchen Bar, a restaurant set to open on Memorial Day weekend in the space overlooking Three Mile Harbor that formerly housed Bostwick’s, and, most recently, Andrra.

    Eric Miller, a chef and restaurateur whose credits here include Miller’s BBQ, Madison and Main, and Hampton Clam Bake, has partnered with Richard Silver, and will serve as executive chef. His son, Adam Miller, will be general manager, and Keith Rennie, formerly of Madison and Main, will be the chef de cuisine. The eatery will focus on local seafood and include a raw bar. The menu will offer small plates, “salads and bowls,” a “Crisp” section, and meat, poultry, fish, and shellfish dishes.

    According to a release, a series of public events is planned, such as clambakes and barbecues featuring roasts made in Mr. Miller’s barbecue smoker. Guest slips at the Harbor Marina will be available for diners who choose to arrive by boat.

    The restaurant, which its creators hope will be the flagship of several Bay Kitchen Bar locations regionally, will be open daily for lunch and dinner service from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

Fund-Raising Dinner

    Tickets are on sale for an April 6 cocktail party and dinner sponsored by the Josh Levine Memorial Foundation and Slow Food East End, to raise money for a master-farmer program and to provide grants to benefit school gardens on the East End.

    Tickets to the cocktail party, which will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Dodds & Eder store in Sag Harbor, will include hors d’oeuvres and an online and live silent auction. The dinner will be held at the American Hotel, also in Sag Harbor. Dinner tickets, which include the cocktail party as well, are $175 per person, or $150 for Slow Food members. Reservations may be made at slowfoodeastend.org or at joshualevinefoundation.org.

Wider Range of Wines

    At Pierre’s restaurant in Bridgehampton, winter down time was put to use in expanding the wine list to include 50 Italian wines, and installing an Enomatic dispenser behind the bar that enables numerous vintages to be served by the glass, or by the half-glass for tasting. Pierre’s is serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner daily.

    With the relentless battering of this winter’s weather and the endless succession of long nights, a body needs to break cabin fever, get to a place of conviviality, and imbibe some heart and soul-warming libations.

    Though loaded with ice for the most part, winter cocktails are meant to give a sense of heat along with a much-needed dose of in-from-the-cold euphoria. Brown spirits and heat-inducing culinary ingredients are two components that define how local establishments are interpreting cold-weather drinks, with a large dose of creativity thrown in. Each drink is a mini vacation, transporting you to your own private getaway.

    Like many other mixologists, Nick & Toni’s food and beverage director, Richard Scoffier, seems to get a kick out of both creating and naming cocktails. His update of an Old Fashioned is cleverly called a New-Fangled and switches a traditional southern-made bourbon with one from the Finger Lakes of this state, aged in chardonnay casks. Where the recipe for an Old Fashioned calls for the muddling of an orange slice and cherry, his rendition uses orange bitters from Fee Brothers, a Rochester company founded in 1863, and a sour cherry liqueur from American Fruits in Warwick, N.Y. “It’s brighter and fresher than most brown spirit cocktails,” he said, an understatement to be sure. He pickles the sour cherries himself with cognac, rye, maraschino liqueur, and bitters, and rims the glass with coarse crystals of raw sugar.

    Winning the prize for the kookiest cocktail name is Fresh Hamptons, which features a happy hour daily from 4 to 6 p.m., for its If It’s Not One Thing It’s Your Mother, a complex variation on a margarita. For a kick like a donkey’s, muddled jalapeno pepper explodes with ginger syrup and organic tequila.  The restaurant, helmed by Todd Jacobs, a chef with a local provenance, offers a sophisticated take on health food. Fresh blackberry juice enriches the color and softens the punch of this drink, but only slightly. This is not for the faint of palate. All juices are made on the premises, except the cranberry.

    Henri Santarem, a bartender and sommelier at the Living Room in East Hampton, has concocted a similar drink. For his Spicy Rita, he also muddles jalapenos as a blazing vehicle for Sauza tequila, but his version takes another turn with the inclusion of fresh lime juice, agave nectar, and homemade honey syrup. Instead of a dash of orange liqueur such as Cointreau he graces it with grapefruit juice so as not to “overwhelm your palate.” The zing of pepper doesn’t linger in the mouth, but travels down the throat where it’s sure to kill off any lurking microbes.

    So much for heating the head. Mr. Scoffier has his wife to thank for a drink he calls a Booze Sweater that warms your cockles (whatever they are). Seems in winter she always orders a shot of bourbon with a side of hot peppermint tea. So he devised what he calls a “very Zen interactive cocktail” to incorporate those ingredients. What makes it interactive is that the customer can pour as much or as little of the tea, steeped in an iron Japanese teapot (the Zen of the equation), into the liquor as desired. The bourbon used here, Widow Jane, is made in Kentucky and finished in a Brooklyn distillery. What’s really interesting is that the water for it comes from the Widow Jane quarry, the source of limestone for the Brooklyn Bridge. Apparently highly mineralized stone-filtered water is a component of great whiskey. “It’s a seven-year bourbon that drinks like a 20,” said Mr. Scoffier. The honey used to sweeten the tea comes from the restaurant’s own hives. “I make this at home by the fire.”

    Mr. Santarem has reinvented the Swedish Storm, a longtime mainstay of the Living Room’s cocktail menu. Now called the Bourbon Storm, he replaces a Swedish whiskey with Maker’s Mark, which he said “has more of a bite to it.” He starts by slicing ginger root into the glass, which he muddles with a generous wedge of lemon and Creole Bitters. A jigger of the Kentucky spirits and elderflower syrup spiked with more ginger finishes the drink. A ginger lover’s paradise, it is also just what the doctor ordered for those who thought they didn’t like bourbon. In this case, the bourbon’s mellow notes cancel out much of the ginger’s edge.

    While winter cocktails may be medicine for the battered soul, at Fresh there’s also a focus on making the elixirs healthful and as local as possible. The Live Love Local cocktail incorporates LiV Vodka, a Long Island distillation made with potatoes, and a dollop of beach plum jelly from Pantigo Farm in East Hampton. “Beach plums are picked till the first frost,” said Kelly Remkus, a bartender and mixologist, and that gives the drink a seasonal bent. Tip a Dark Star is a comforting aromatic infusion of mulling spices such as star anise and cloves blended with rum. All the cocktails here pair well with items from the bar menu, which includes the crispiest calamari ever, served with a refreshing aioli, crunchy spears of baked dinosaur kale, and raw cheeses from Mecox Dairy.

    For drama, the Jack Frost at Nick & Toni’s is finished by torching a marshmallow (house-made, of course) atop a concoction of house-made peppermint schnapps and the kitchen’s own hot cocoa (made with Valrhona). It is so dessert-like that it makes the ideal after-dinner cordial. Or, since it contains at least two food groups, perhaps you can skip dinner altogether.

    Coffee is one of the most important beverages in history. As a flavoring in desserts and sauces it is one of the most intriguing ingredients, along with vanilla and chocolate.

    How was this little berry and its stimulating properties discovered? Supposedly by a herd of goats in Ethiopia in the 9th century. Their herder noticed they had become quite frisky after nibbling some off a bush. At first, humans ate the berries whole, then crushed and mixed with fat. Later the fermented pulp was made into a kind of wine. Around 1000 A.D. a concoction was created from the dried fruit, beans, and hull. Roasting began in Yemen in the 13th century and the beverage extracted from the roasted beans was called qahwah, originally a poetic name for wine.

    Sufis enjoyed the stimulating effects as this energized them for hours and hours of prayer. Dervishes and Muslim pilgrims are responsible for spreading the use of coffee throughout the Middle and Near East and North Africa.

    When did coffee arrive in Western Europe? It was introduced to France by the Turkish ambassador in 1688 but may have already been drunk in Venice. Apparently the Turkish ambassador gave exotic parties, one of which was floridly described by Isaac d’Israeli:

    “On bended knee, the black slaves of the ambassador, arrayed in the most gorgeous Oriental costumes, served the choicest mocha coffee in tiny cups of egg-shell porcelain, hot, strong, and fragrant, poured out in saucers of gold and silver, placed on embroidered silk doylies fringed with gold bullion, to the grand dames, who fluttered their fans with many grimaces, bending their piquant faces — be-rouged, be-powdered, and be-patched — over the new and steaming beverage.”

    At times coffee was seen as a subversive beverage. Islam perceived the conviviality of coffeehouses a threat to religious life. Authorities at the Vatican saw it as “Satan’s latest trap to catch Christian souls.” However, once Pope Clement VIII tried it, he deemed it okey dokey.

    Coffee is, without a doubt, one of those drinks that people are extremely particular about. Just wait in line at any Starbucks or Jack’s Stir Brew in Amagansett and you will hear a litany of requests, requirements, and customizations for practically each and every person. I am proud that I “forced” my son to work as a barista at Jack’s as soon as he graduated from college. Nothing will give a young man incentive to get that big boy job more than waiting on fussy, impatient New Yorkers.

    How we brew our own coffee at home is also almost as varied as the types of beans and grinds available to us. I like a dark roast in a French press. Starbucks brand will do just fine. The Nespresso and Keurig machines confuse me. How are we supposed to know or remember what Bukeela ka Ethiopia or Linzio Lungo taste like? Instant coffee is an abomination, although okay to use in a pinch for ice creams and cakes or as part of a dry rub for pork or chicken.

    Coffee is the second most sold commodity in the world, after oil. New Yorkers consume seven times more coffee than people in any other U.S. city. There are about 50 species of coffee, a relative of the gardenia, and most are grown in Africa, Brazil, and Colombia. Hawaii is the only state in the United States to produce coffee commercially.

    The caffeine in coffee is believed to be all right in small doses. If you attempt to drink 100 cups of coffee it could be fatal, although Teddy Roosevelt was known to drink a gallon a day . . . which explains the unfortunate color of his teeth. Light coffees, along with black and green teas, contain antioxidants, but espresso-type coffees can have an undesirable effect on blood cholesterol levels. So pay attention to the type of coffee you drink and how it is prepared. One or two cups a day should suffice.

    The morning ritual of having a good, freshly brewed cup of coffee is a nice way to start the day. Meeting friends for a late afternoon latte is a pleasant pastime, catching up and winding down. If you’ve ever been lucky enough to sip an espresso in Milan, or thick, sweet Cuban coffee in Little Havana, or better yet, spend half your life staring at passers-by in a Paris cafe, you can appreciate this special drink’s long and interesting history, both cultural and culinary.

Cafe Brulot 

Cafe Brulot is a fragrant, after-dinner drink from New Orleans. It is often served in restaurants, with a great show of flaming brandy drizzled down a curl of orange peel into your demitasse cup. I’m not giving you that recipe. Keep it simple. This is also delicious served cold.

Zest from 1 orange
12 whole cloves
1/3 cup brandy
1/3 cup Cointreau
3 2-inch strips of lemon peel 2 Tbsp. sugar 

3 cups hot, strong coffee, preferably with chicory 

Stud the orange or lemon peel with the whole cloves. Combine all ingre- dients in a saucepan and bring just to a boil. Simmer a minute or two, then serve. 

Costa Rican Coffee Glaze 

This recipe is based on one from Douglas Rodriguez’s “Latin Flavors on the Grill.” I have changed it considerably and simplified it. I would also sug- gest adding a bit more sweetness and rum as my friend Kathleen did before she marinated a pork tenderloin in the glaze and tossed it on the grill. You will have extra sauce to freeze. This would probably also be great with grilled chicken. 

Makes three cups. 

3 Tbsp. oil
1 cup diced white onion
2 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger
2 serrano chiles with seeds, diced (I used jalapenos) 4 cloves garlic, chopped
3 Tbsp. molasses
1 cup dark rum
2 Tbsp. ground coffee
1 Tbsp. cocoa powder
1 Tbsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp.. vanilla extract
8 cups brewed coffee
3 Tbsp. butter, softened
Salt to taste 

In medium saucepan heat the oil over medium-high heat. Saute onion un- til caramelized, about 10 minutes. Add ginger, chilies, and garlic. Cook a few minutes more, then add molasses. 

Remove from heat and add the rum, being careful that it does not flare up. Stir and cook about two minutes. Add ground coffee, cocoa, cinnamon, vanilla, and two cups of brewed coffee. Reduce liquid by half, then add rest of coffee and continue to cook until reduced to three cups. This will take a while and will make your house very fragrant. Remove from heat and cool. 

Puree in a blender with the softened butter, adding salt to taste. Use at once, store in refrigerator for up to two weeks, or freeze. 

Kahlua and Coconut Ice Cream 

This is a wonderful, quick dessert I learned from my friend Michel Plitt Wirth years ago. It is rich and naughty and guests always love it! 

For each serving:1 scoop high quality vanilla ice cream 2 Tbsp. toasted coconut
2 Tbsp. Kahlua or Tia Maria liqueur 

Place scoop of ice cream in pretty dish or bowl. Drizzle with Kahlua. Top with toasted coconut. Go nuts. 

Dish Is Closing

    Dish restaurant in Water Mill has announced that is closing permanently, due to the takeover of their space by new landlords.

    Peter Robertson and Merrill Indoe opened the 16-seat eatery five years ago and offered a chef’s choice weekly menu for a four-course prix fixe.

Sunday Soup Day

    Break out the soup bowls, because this weekend brings the fifth go-round of Empty Bowls, a fund-raiser for the Springs Seedlings gardening project, sponsored by Project MOST at the Springs School.

    From noon to 3 p.m. on Sunday, an impressive lineup of local chefs will be dishing out a wide variety of soups at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett. For $12, adults can have their soup bowl — taken along from home — filled and refilled as many times as desired. The cost is $5 for children ages 5 and up; those under 5 can taste for free.

    Among the participating cooks are Cheryl Stair of Art of Eating, Debbie Geppert of Debbie Geppert Events, Damien O’Donnell from the Harbor Grill, Joe Realmuto of Nick & Toni’s, Chris Eggert of Indian Wells Tavern, Jeanine Burge of Silver Spoon Specialties, and Gretchen Menser of Fresno. There will also be vats of soup made at the Springs General Store, Old Stone Market, Pepperoni’s, the Seafood Shop, One Stop Market, Simply Sublime, Hampton Seafood Market, and more.

Writers at Almond

    The Artists and Writers Night program at Almond restaurant in Bridgehampton will feature writers on Tuesday at 7 p.m. in a program titled “Telling Lies: Fiction on the East End.” Organized by David Kozatch, a writer himself who will read from a recently completed literary thriller, it will include additional readings by Jen Seft and Kara Westerman.

    For $40 in advance, or $45 at the door, plus tax and gratuity, attendees will be offered a three-course dinner served family style along with a glass of local craft beer or wine. Reservations are required.

    We all travel, and we all have to eat. Why is it often the case that our nutritional needs go right out the window when traveling? We surrender to junk food and spend too much. I don’t know about you, but I eat too much when traveling; I think it’s boredom.

    Planes, trains, and automobiles. Jitneys and ferries. The chances of finding a decent meal or snack in, around, or on these modes of transportation are slim. Granted, you have more control over your food when driving yourself. You can pack what you want, bring a cooler, stop whenever and wherever you want, but it’s still a hassle. It’s just easier to stop at that K.F.C. on the New Jersey Turnpike and gobble that extra-crispy chicken sandwich.

    Have you ever had a decent bite of any kind on the New London or Port Jeff ferries? Me neither, and I’ve tried just about everything they offer: crumb coffee cake, ham, egg, and cheese on a kaiser roll, bagel, Jack and Coke. As a restaurant critic, I also can’t resist peering intently into their “food preparation” area. It’s gross. But you see people lining up at the snack bar as soon as they disembark from their cars. You’d think the ferry ride was 14 hours the way they carb up!

    We’ve all ridden on the Jitney. I think it’s nice that they offer you party mix and a pee-specimen-size container of lemonade or four ounces of water. The party mix is fun, first I get rid of the pretzels, then dig around for the extra salty, super-orange cheese doodly things. Then I wish I had a napkin or they had running water in the excellent air freshener-infused lavatories. Have you ever checked the fat content on those little muffins they give you? It’s staggering. Again, I confess, I eat this stuff. My back issues of the New Yorker can only hold my attention for so long.

    Don’t eat the food on trains, ’nuff said.    Air travel is the ultimate challenge. You have less control, and the time you spend in the terminal, on the runway, and in the air can take up several meal times. If you are traveling with small children you must bring your own food. Years ago I was on a plane stuck on the runway for four hours, and the parents next to me had not packed a single snack for their young ones. The flight attendants wouldn’t serve them a thing, and those poor kids got crankier and crankier and hungrier and thirstier. That’s child abuse.

    Bring crackers, Baby Bel cheeses, fruit, and carrots. Make some homemade gorp, any mixture of nuts, dried fruit, and chocolate chips. Freeze Go-Gurts (the size complies with T.S.A. rules), pack granola bars, and purchase water after you go through security. Instant soups and dehydrated oatmeal can be prepared with just some hot water from your friendly flight attendant. No kimchi or Limburger, please.

    Apparently Legal Sea Foods has opened branches in many airports, and people have started bringing clam chowder onto planes, stinking up the cabin for hours. Don’t do this to your fellow passengers! I do confess, however, that my favorite emergency meal for the jitney is a Greek salad with grilled chicken from John Papas Cafe. Is this passive-aggressive behavior? Probably, but I do it for the person who sat behind me once and . . . clipped her nails. You don’t want to sit next to me anyway. I have narcolepsy, a bladder the size of a titmouse, and the flu. Just kidding.

    As the food on airplanes gets worse (salami and jelly beans, anyone?), more expensive, or simply nonexistent, the food in airports is improving. There is a chain called Cibo Express that has okay sandwiches, decent hummus, even sushi. I stick with the brown rice with vegetables. If you are lucky enough to travel through Chicago, San Francisco, or Detroit you will have some tasty options before you board. If you go through Minneapolis, Houston, or Las Vegas, the choices are grim. The JetBlue terminal at J.F.K. has become legendary for restaurants offering tapas, bistro food, Japanese, and Italian. I have never been on Etihad, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Air France, or Turkish Airlines, but apparently their in-flight meals are excellent. I have been on Singapore Airlines, and its food and service were exceptional.

    So what kinds of foods travel well? Whole wheat pastas for salad, quinoa, and tabbouleh. These are fine at room temperature for three to five hours. Also, have no fear of commercial mayonnaise, this is safe and stable at room temperature. It’s the eggs and chicken and meats you should be careful about. Bring bananas, grapes, apples, clementines, carrots, celery, snap peas, edamame. If you bring sandwiches (focaccia with tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella is good) wrap in plastic, then aluminum foil. Use an insulated, collapsible sandwich bag. And don’t forget Wetnaps or Handiwipes.

    Some professional chefs have offered suggestions for airplane food. Josh Capon of Lure Fishbar in New York City freezes shrimp cocktail and brings sauces in little containers. That’s a bit labor-intensive for the rest of us, and I’m not sure I want to get a whiff of his crustacean extravaganza on a five-hour flight. Eric Ripert of Le Bernardin never eats on the plane; he likes Wolfgang Puck’s Express, which has outlets in many airports. I have tried the Chinese chicken salad and it is excellent, full of cabbage and carrots and white meat chicken with a tasty sesame dressing. Beats Cinnabon. Another chef brings burrata cheese and thin slices of toasted Tuscan bread. One fellow swears by a Slim Fast bar with a glass of champagne! And let’s not forget, folks, that most basic of childhood sandwiches, the good old peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

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    On Sunday afternoon behind the bar in the little red building across from the Montauk Movie, Vaughn Cutillo pulled the handle and out poured a “blond-haired lady in a black dress.”

    That’s one way the Irish describe Guinness Stout. Except in this case it was the Montauk Brewing Company’s Guardsman Stout, as dark, rich, and smooth a draft as any beer lover could ask for, named for the Montauk Coast Guard station and crew of the cutter Rid­ley that is based there. The Guardsman will be introduced and dedicated to our local Coasties on Saturday from 7 to 10 p.m. at Swallow East, a venue chosen for its view of the Coast Guard station across the harbor. There will be free food and beer.

    “They are this community’s unsung heroes. They are overlooked a lot. They work in a harsh environment, and they’re ready for everything. It’s stressful. The Guardsman is a beer that gives back,” said Mr. Cutillo, who, with his partners Eric Moss and Joe Sullivan, founded the Montauk Brewing Company three years ago.

    The Guardsman is the eighth brew concocted by the three amigos. Their popular Driftwood Ale will very soon be available in cans sold in stores, and a new ale, Arrowhead Irish Red, will be on tap at the brewery as well as most bars and restaurants from Southampton to Montauk in time for St. Patrick’s Day. The homegrown brew masters have come a long way in three years.

    “We used 18 pounds of grain to make our first batch in the basement. Now we use 11,000 per batch,” Mr. Cutillo said, the beer making having been moved from the basement of the little red brewing company headquarters to a full-scale brewery in Pennsylvania to keep up with demand.

    “The Coast Guard station has a softball team and they come in after the game and to our tastings. We announced the Guardsman on Facebook and got a response from a Coast Guard station in California.”

    Unfortunately, the Montauk brewery is unable to fill that particular West Coast demand, at least for now, because of laws governing interstate sales. “We had no idea it could go countrywide.”

    Saturday’s event is by no means the first time the Montauk Brewing Company has given back to the local community. They have rolled out kegs at a number of local benefits and celebrations over the past three years.

    “The town has been so welcoming. We want to give back,” Mr. Cutillo said.