Food

Stave off cold-season boredom and ennui by dropping into Dopo La Spiaggia, an Italian eatery with a Sag Harbor location that recently opened another restaurant at the former Race Lane in East Hampton. The East Hampton Dopo is open nightly at 5:30 and for lunch and/or brunch on Saturday and Sunday. For a regular old night, or lunch, out, Service Station in East Hampton, which opened this year on Montauk Highway where Winston’s was, is open every day year round from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Whether it’s celebrating the end of 2016 or the start of 2017, there are a number of options for those who want to go out, eat, and party. New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day at Nick and Toni’s in East Hampton will feature a la carte specials. The restaurant will be open for dinner from 5 to 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve and for New Year’s Day brunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. The New Year’s Eve dinner party at the Living Room restaurant at c/o the Maidstone inn in East Hampton will have a Gatsby theme, with a “toast to new beginnings” at midnight.

Need some options for Christmas Eve? A la carte holiday specials for Christmas Eve at Red/Bar Brasserie in Southampton include grilled Montauk oysters, Hudson Valley foie gras, Maine lobster, smoked Long Island duck breast, angus rib steak, and cedar plank-roasted Scottish salmon. Almond restaurant in Bridgehampton will offer visitors a chance to both dine and to give, as a portion of the revenue from meals that night will be donated to the Pajama Program, which gives warm pjs and brand-new books to children in need. A la carte holiday specials will be on the menu through Dec. 31, based on availability, at Nick and Toni’s in East Hampton, which will serve dinner on Christmas Eve from 6 to 10 p.m. and be closed on Christmas.

Even though the ground is hard, the trees are bare, and most farmers markets are closed for the winter, locally sourced and produced food items are still available for last-minute holiday gifts. The list of artisanal purveyors on the East End seems to grow every year, and one of the newest is Two Jammin’ Chicks.

Need a place for dinner Christmas Eve? Try the 1770 House in East Hampton. Michael Rozzi, the chef, will add some holiday dishes to the restaurant’s a la carte menu. An eight-course dinner paired with wine, whiskey, and sake will be presented tonight at Sen in Sag Harbor. From 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., Park Place Wines and Liquors of East Hampton will host a pre-dinner wine tasting. Dinner will follow.

Why in the world would you attempt a spectacular, complicated dessert when you’ve already got so much to do during this holiday season? Because it is an accomplishment, it shows how much you care about your friends and family, and sometimes it’s just cool to create a whopper of a showstopper!

a sake and wine dinner will be held next Thursday at Sen restaurant in Sag Harbor. The event will start at 5:30 p.m. with a complimentary wine tasting by Park Place Wine and Liquors of East Hampton. Barbecue and creativity go hand in hand on Monday nights at Townline BBQ in Sagaponack this month, with visits by Nikki Payne of the Salty Canvas, who will host paint parties from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Monday and Dec. 19.

It began with the invitation that couldn’t be refused: “Would you and your friends like to come to Paris for Thanksgiving?” Hot diggity dog, yes, please!

How did a meatball from Staten Island with a 45-year pedigree wind up with a shrine to itself in Bridgehampton? The journey of Tony Meatball began in 1971, when Anthony and Joanne D’Andrea, first-generation Italians, opened the RoadHouse, a restaurant some three miles west of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

Wear your ugly holiday sweater to the tree-lighting party at Baron’s Cove in Sag Harbor tomorrow at 7:15. There will be live music by the Lynn Blue Duo from 6 to 10 p.m. The next Artists and Writers Night at Almond restaurant in Bridgehampton gets underway at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, with a theme of “Protest Prose and Notes on Comfort.”

It is especially hard to write a review of a place that you wanted to like, thought you should like, and hoped to like, but it ends up being a rather expensive disappointment. Such was the case with Tauk at Trail’s End.

The Amagansett Farmers Market will host a Buy Local, Give Local holiday market on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Shoppers will have the opportunity to purchase comestibles made by Anke’s Fit Bakery, Bonac Bees, Browder’s Birds, Peconic River Preserves, and the Amagansett Sea Salt Co. For a Thanksgiving alternative, Momi Ramen will be open today from 5 to 10 p.m. Tomorrow, the restaurant will serve from noon to 11 p.m.

This is your last chance to dine at Café Max in East Hampton.The restaurant is to close after Nov. 26 after 25 years in business. Till then, however, there is a $22, three-course prix fixe dinner offered all night, all week. Winter farm shares at Quail Hill Farm are available, and will provide the holders with items such as root vegetables, fresh greens, herbs, winter squash, carrots, garlic, dried beans, and wheatberries from Friday, Nov. 18, until February.

Babette’s restaurant in East Hampton is offering a $21.95 prix fixe dinner from 5 to 9 p.m. on Sundays. Need ideas for Thanksgiving celebrations? The Highway Restaurant and Bar in East Hampton can provide all the side dishes and desserts needed. All you to do is prepare the turkey. The Scarpetta Beach restaurant at Gurney’s in Montauk will be serving a four-course Thanksgiving prix fixe next Thursday from noon to 8 p.m. A children’s menu will be offered, as will activities for children between noon and 4 p.m., allowing parents to sit back and enjoy a holiday respite.

The first Thanksgiving of 1621 was simply referred to as a harvest celebration. An Englishman named Edward Winslow described it in a letter to a “loving, and old friend”: “I never in my life remember a more seasonable year, than we have here enjoyed — for fish and fowl we have a great abundance, fresh cod in the summer — our bay full of lobsters, all the springtime the earth sendeth forth naturally good salad herbs: Here are grapes, white and red, very sweet and strong also.”

The poet Walt Whitman was a frequent visitor to Greenport because his sister Mary Elizabeth Van Nostrand lived there. He described it as a “handsome situation” that was “unsurpassed for health.” He must have been eating a lot of oysters!

Elizabeth Yastrzemski, a baker and floral and garden designer, will lead a workshop on the making of beach plum jelly next Thursday night at 6 at the Rogers Mansion in Southampton. Those interested can register by calling the museum. The cost is $35, or $25 for museum members. Rowdy Hall in East Hampton has reintroduced its dinner-and-a-movie special. Sunday through Wednesday, a beef or turkey burger can be ordered along with a voucher for the East Hampton Cinema, for $22.

Head down to La Fondita, the Mexican take-out shop in Amagansett, for Dia de los Muertos. The Day of the dead menu will include pork, chicken, or chile and cheese tamales, chiles en nogada (poblano peppers stuffed with meat or cheese), churros (fried cinnamon-y pastries), and champurrado, a warm chocolate beverage. The special event will be celebrated tomorrow through Sunday. Baron’s Cove in Sag Harbor will mark Halloween weekend with a live music lineup every night from tomorrow through Monday, and specials on nibbles including clams casino, oysters on the half shell, pretzel bites with dipping sauce or melted beer cheddar, sliders, smoked white bean dip with bread and crudités, fries, and a cheese plate.

I first learned about Long Island cheese pumpkins about 23 years ago. I was working as a pastry chef somewhere out here, and it was that time of year, the time of year that I would have to crank out many, many pumpkin pies. So I started working on my supply list: industrial quantities of Libby’s canned pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, lotsa eggs. And then the head chef presented me with a crate full of pretty, pale, squat pumpkins, a variety I had never seen before.

A Sunday-night prix fixe at Babette’s restaurant on Newtown Lane in East Hampton, will be offered from 5 to 9 p.m. The cost is $19.95 and features a choice of turkey meatballs, barbecue tofu, steamed edamame, and crisp goat cheese dumplings, among other items, for starters, followed by entrees such as chicken mole enchiladas, vegetable pad thai, roast chicken, salads, and Atlantic cod. Dessert is included as well. On Saturday at Baron’s Cove restaurant in Sag Harbor, Matty Boudreau, the chef, will serve up a menu in honor of Oktoberfest from 1 to 5 p.m. Bratwurst, sausages, grilled corn, German-style pretzels, apple cider, seasonal brews, and more will be offered.

Is there a food or food product that you remember from your childhood with great fondness? Have you ever revisited that food in the hopes that the taste satisfaction would match your memory of it? Did it?

The fall menu at Baron’s Cove restaurant in Sag Harbor includes dishes based on locally sourced ingredients, such as scallops with spaghetti squash from the Milk Pail farm, roasted North Fork fennel and radishes with brown butter vinaigrette, parsnip soup, and cauliflower beignets with a spicy carrot dipping sauce. Maude Muto, the owner and chef at Hampton Herbivore, and a member of the team at the Wellness Foundation of East Hampton, will demonstrate how to make a delicious plant-based dessert at a potluck dinner on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at the South Fork Natural History Museum in Bridgehampton.

The locals are gathering at Momi Ramen in East Hampton on Wednesday for locals night. From 5 to 10 p.m., Sapporo draft beer is two-for-one, and free snacks will be served at the bar. Baron’s Cove restaurant in Sag Harbor is open year round, and on Saturday will have a fall festival from 1 to 8 p.m. featuring barbecue brisket, ribs, beer-can chicken, and smoked striped bass, along with sliders, burgers, and hot dogs.

A warren of small rooms has been opened up and lightened. The floors and trim are dark, the walls off-white, and there are a few hints that this location was, in fact, once a service station, such as the old-fashioned bell hose outside that gives a little “ding ding” when you drive over it.

As early adopters of the Slow Food movement, East End foodies may find the WLIW21 Metrofocus feature on the movement and its adherents old news. Yet to many around the region, the coverage of the East End’s farmers, chefs, and schoolyard gardens may prove edifying.

You can “come to the table.” by joining the East End’s Slow Food chapter. Members can participate in Slow Food dinners and other events that highlight the role of local agriculture and locally grown food. A three-course prix fixe at the Living Room restaurant in East Hampton, at c/o the Maidstone inn, has dropped in price to $35, from $49.

You'll flip for flapjacks!. Pancakes will be served at Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor following a talk on Saturday at 5 p.m. by Craig Carlson, the author of a memoir, “Pancakes in Paris: Living the American Dream in France.” At Momi Ramen in East Hampton, a bar menu offered on Fridays and Saturdays from 8 to 10 p.m. includes oshinko (Japanese pickled vegetables) and eda­mame for $5; two types of gyoza, a Japanese-style dumpling, for $8, and kara-age, fried items, for $8.

Your mind may already be turning to pumpkins and apples this time of year (or mush, depending on how busy your summer was), but it’s time to get to work. If you want to save some of the glorious corn, tomatoes, herbs, and more to enjoy throughout the winter, you need to get cracking.

There is something about a small, cozy restaurant that creates an atmosphere of jollity and camaraderie. Estia’s Little Kitchen is such a place.

It took longer than anticipated, but last month a 1977 Citroen H van rolled into the Kirk Park Beach parking lot in Montauk and Bex Waffles was open for business.