Food

Our approach to Via del Mare in Water Mill felt eerie. The curtains were drawn, there were no cars in the parking lot, and it was pitch black inside. I started rehearsing an apology to my editor for not having a review for this week’s issue. It’s happened before, usually at places like Philippe that are only open for vampire weekenders and don’t stay open for people who dine and enjoy food in the evening.

New menu selections at Babette’s restaurant in East Hampton will feature healthy and organic meals with vegetarian and vegan choices. Forage for wild food with Chandra Elmendorf in the woods near Trout Pond in Noyac.

Sant Ambroeus

30 Main Street Southampton

631-283-1233

Thursday through Monday, 10 a.m.-10 p.m.

The village of Southampton feels different. The streets are wider, the houses are bigger, the inhabitants smooth and groomed. The shops on Main Street are predictably peppered with high-end real estate offices that have glowing, interactive features in the windows. Press a button and stare at your Water Mill McMansion pipe dream. There are still pockets of charm, the Village Cheese Shop, Silvers, and the Japanese antique store that never seems to be open.

Lovers of both barbecue and football might want to earmark Townline BBQ in Sagaponack as well as the Smokin’ Wolf barbecue takeout shop in East Hampton as places to go for football watching victuals.

Ryan Murphy, a native of Ireland, is the new chef at the Topping Rose House. His new menu reflects his Irish roots and a French culinary influence. He uses seasonal produce, much of which is grown on the Topping Rose site.

How does Spam tonkatsu sound to you? Would you like to try a tasty paleo breakfast burrito with ham and not much else? Let’s find a recipe for Cowboy Casserole; this is a mixture of Tater Tots, canned soup, canned vegetables, and cheeeeeese. Christmas will be upon us before you know it, so why not perfect your Christmas crack now, your dentist will thank you! This is a mixture of Saltine crackers, lotsa sugar, a cup of butter, and melted chocolate.

Rowdy Hall kicks off its Oktoberfest celebration on Saturday from 3 to 5 p.m. featuring an outdoor German beer garden in the restaurant courtyard. Jeremy Blutstein, the East by Northeast restaurant’s chef will prepare a menu to complement wines by Macari Vineyards next Thursday.

Cauliflower is one of Long Island’s best-known crops. Our climate, with cool evenings and moist air, is perfect for growing firm, sweet, Brassica oleracea var. botrytis.

The top tomatoes from the taste-off at Quail Hill Farm will be for sale at the Amagansett Farmers Market for the rest of the season. Next Wednesday is Mexican Independence Day and La Fondita in Amagansett will celebrate with specials: chiles en nogada, a traditional Independence Day dish, and pozole rojo.

The calendar may say it’s the end of summer, but it’s really not. We still have a good four to six weeks of glorious weather, warm ocean and bays, fewer tourists, and plenty of fruits and vegetables still growing.

The first time I dined at the 1770 House it had only been open a few weeks. It wasn’t for a review; it was for a raucous birthday dinner. We were dressed to the nines, the gents wore ties, and we tried to behave ourselves, but we were noisy and happy and delighted to be in this marvelous new restaurant.

The Wolffer Estate winery in Sagaponack produced Finca Wolffer Rosé in Argentina this year. The wine will be featured at an Argentinian Summer Send-Off dinner on Sunday at the Crow’s Nest in Montauk.

It’s been quite the year for Shawn Christman and Courtney Fruin Christman. Not only did they open the Sea Bean, a gourmet food truck that does catering and sells from Montauk’s Lions Field and other prime spots, but they got married on June 6 and are expecting the birth of their first child in a few weeks.

Sometimes reviewing restaurants can be a bore and a chore. You have no idea how many expensive, mediocre, noisy evenings I have spent with friends trying “locally sourced” this, “artisanal” that, “farm to table” flotsam, and “muddled shrub with cranberry spheres” jetsam. North Sea Tavern and Raw’r Bar, I am pleased to report, is a new restaurant that doesn’t just talk the talk, it walks the walk.

Don't miss the weekly Sunday barbecue at Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton. It starts at 6 p.m. and features wine pairings by Wolffer Estate Vineyards.

Walk through an allée of bamboo and you reach the Backyard restaurant, which, on the evening of our visit, remained empty the entire time, not because there were no customers, but because everyone chose to dine outside by the pool. The restaurant itself is plain and simple, white with white director’s chairs.

Customers expecting overflowing bins of fresh produce or deli cases bursting with prepared foods might be confused upon entering the new Amagansett Farmers Market, which the Amagansett Food Institute reopened on Aug. 1.

The Lucy’s Whey stand at the Amagansett Farmers Market is beinf run by Lucy Kazickas, an Amagansett resident and founder of Lucy’s Whey, a cheese shop with a home base at Manhattan’s Chelsea Market. Harvest your own sea salt at a workshop in Southampton on Aug. 29, led by Michele Martuscello, the founder of Shelly Sells Sea Salt.

Visit five local farms and six private gardens with Guild Hall's “garden to table” tour. The tour will be part of its Garden as Art event on Aug. 22.

It began in middle school. Every morning, along with Calvin and Hobbes, Tintin, and a variety of other books scattered around, under, and in his bed, I would find my copy of Edna Lewis’s “The Taste of Country Cooking.”

This space next to Sen in Sag Harbor has changed cuisines and decor quite a bit over the last few years. Phao was Thai, I think there was an Indian restaurant briefly, and there was the Cuddy, a gastro pub. Now it is Wolffer Kitchen, the first restaurant on Long Island connected to a winery.

They are rolling! A food truck derby will be held at the Hayground School on Friday, Aug. 14. The Harbor Market and Kitchen in Sag Harbor is now open seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., serving everything from egg dishes, pastry, and espresso to sandwiches, tacos, lobster rolls, and wood-oven pizzas.

For local food get down to the farmers market building on Main Street in Amagansett to see the new outlet run by the Amagansett Food Institute. Karen Lee will present a cooking class on Sunday focusing on Chinese dishes, her specialty, at a private residence in Amagansett. Those interested can register online at karenleecooking.com.

This is the time of year when we want to spend as much time as possible outdoors on the water, at the beach, in a park. So naturally we want to bring along foods that are easy to transport, are tasty and stay fresh, and, most important, remain safe.

Visitors to the Springs Farmers Market this summer may have encountered a couple of new and smiling faces — the friendly couple at the Buckwhat! booth, selling a new line of tasty bars and noshes made with buckwheat, dates, and other healthy ingredients.

To paraphrase a quote-counterquote that was, in fact, never uttered: “The people of Southampton are different from you and me — they have more money.” This may be why a restaurant like Circo will succeed. Manhattan, Abu Dhabi, Southampton. These are wealthy pockets of the world that don’t question why a vegetable lasagna costs $32.

Peter Berley, a chef, will give a demonstration on grilling midsummer garden-fresh vegetables and fruits at the Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton next Thursday. The star come out for the “meteor-shower party” on Tuesday from 9 to 11 p.m. at Townline BBQ in Sagaponack.

Surf on down to the Montauk Board Riders food truck, parked at the Ditch Plain beach. But first stop in at LT Burger in Sag Harbor for a breakfast of eggs benedict, burritos, huevos rancheros, and egg white omelets, along with French toast, sandwiches, pastries, and Hampton Coffee Company coffee.

Seafood and barbecue fare feature at Rick’s Crabby Cowboy Cafe on East Lake Drive in Montauk. Among the new summer menu items at the Backyard Restaurant at Sole East inn are a $19 surf and turf with a rosemary grilled lamb chop. Babette's celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

You can learn a lot about people by the type of food they serve at a cocktail party.