Food

South Fork

Kitchens Cafe

Student Center

Stony Brook University

239 Montauk Highway

Southampton

Open from 11-2 Weekdays

A few weeks ago a friend asked if I would like to sample some of the best, freshest, cheapest food available, in other words, one of the best-kept secrets on the East End. How is it I didn’t know of this special place, this little jewel of a cafe, open five days a week for lunch? One reason could be that it is essentially a Russian nesting doll.

Heading out to Montauk for a weekend drive? Inlet Seafood restaurant, which has a harbor and Block Island Sound view from its high spot on East Lake Drive, is serving lunch and dinner Fridays through Sundays, and a Sunday brunch.

Zagat Comments

The 1770 House restaurant in East Hampton has asked its fans to sign in to the Zagat dining guide website and weigh in on the eatery. Zagat is doing its first survey of Long Island restaurants in several years. Comments can be made at zagat.com/vote through Jan. 6.

Slow Food Reps

The Jamaica Specialties shop in East Hampton has weekly lunch specials for $8.95 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Mondays through Thursdays. Every Friday there is a fish special, with different fish — kingfish, porgy, red snapper, and more — served Jamaican style. A fried fish special is $12, while steamed fish is $15; the specials are served with a choice of rice, yellow yam, boiled dumplings, or boiled banana.

In Montauk

Long Island Restaurant Week

As the weather cools, restaurants offer bargains to lure diners from the warmth of hearth and home. Long Island Restaurant Week will begin Sunday and continue through Nov. 9, with more than 165 restaurants offering prix fixe, three-course menus for $27.95.

Participating South Fork eateries are 1770 House and the Living Room at c/o the Maidstone in East Hampton, Almond and Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton, and the Cuddy and Page at 63 Main in Sag Harbor.

I am a huge fan of fall vegetables, almost all of them. They are durable, adaptable, and malleable. Many can be eaten raw, or cooked a number of ways — roasted, steamed, fried, pureed, stir-fried. And they play nicely together, such as celery root cooked with potatoes for a mash, or butternut squash cubes roasted with carrots, sweet potatoes, and shallots.

Blue Canoe

104 Third Street

Greenport

477-6888

Daily, noon-9 p.m.,

Friday and Saturday, noon-10 p.m.

Blue Canoe in Greenport is just plain fun. It’s on the water, has an expansive outdoor dining area, an eclectic menu with an Asian slant, great oysters in several guises, and a friendly staff. It is casual, but the food is pretty spiffy.

East End Food Hub Grant

The Amagansett Food Institute has received a $25,000 grant through the United States Department of Agriculture’s Local Food Promotion Program. The grant will be used to study the feasibility of a food hub on the East End, where locally produced food could be collected, marketed, and distributed to institutional and wholesale buyers.

A consultant will be engaged to determine whether a food hub could help members of the food institute expand their businesses.

Wainscott Main Wine and Spirits

A fall menu at 75 Main in Southampton is centered on local produce and includes dishes such as truffle-crumb stuffed breast of chicken served with polenta, garlic, and broccoli rabe; marinated skirt steak, and blue crab-crusted halibut.

On Mondays at 75 Main, pasta entrees, served with a soup or salad to start, are $16, and on Sundays there are steak specials: a burger, flatiron steak, marinated skirt steak, or hanger steak served with soup or salad for $18.  In addition, the restaurant offers a three-course prix fixe Tuesdays through Fridays for $29.95.

I do not like (insert little organ that controls our emotions here) New York. As a matter of fact, I very much dislike New York. Not the state, the city. It is dirty, noisy, nearly impossible to negotiate, expensive, nerve-wracking, just all around dreadful. I’ve never lived there and I never will.

The festival is coming, the festival is coming, the Hamptons International Film Festival is coming! By Thursday the swarm of over 18,000 black-leather clad cinephiles will begin descending upon our lovely villages. They know where the films are being shown, East Hampton, Sag Harbor, Southampton, Montauk, and Westhampton, but do they know where to eat? Have no fear, I am here to “direct.”

Restaurants will be lively this weekend, with the Hamptons International Film Festival in town and Montauk’s Fall Festival taking place, but for some it will be a last hurrah before they scale back or shut down for the season.

If you spend an hour with Nadia Ernestus, you will learn that sauerkraut is more than the base for choucroute garnie or something you put on a hot dog. Ms. Ernestus is the force behind Hamptons Brine, the producer of three kinds of raw sauerkraut and two versions of kvass, or sauerkraut juice.

Ms. Ernestus, a Sag Harbor resident who came to the United States from the Soviet Union in 1981, traces the beginning of her interest in fermented foods to a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes. “I wasn’t overweight, and the doctors didn’t offer anything but drugs,” she said.

A series of classes at Wainscott Main Wine and Spirits, to be held on Wednesdays through November, offers an education for aspiring oenophiles. Each begins at 5:30 p.m. and costs $10. On tap for Wednesday is “First Person: The Case for Stewardship. Taste — Why It Matters,” to be presented by Liz Willette Danneels of Grand Cru Selections and Jordan Salcito, the wine director at Momofuku Restaurant Group.

Montauk Yacht Club

A prix fixe for fall at Almond in Bridgehampton is offered Tuesdays through Thursdays, and on Sundays, between 5:30 and 7 p.m. Three courses, with different choices nightly for each course, are offered for $29. Among the entrees are whole roasted dorado, marinated Sagaponack beefsteaks, and roast chicken. An appetizer and dessert are included as well.

Manly Mondays

It began, as no doubt many wonderful things do, At the Common Table. This is the annual dinner served out in the orchard at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett. The food grown at the farm is transformed by local chefs into a feast for 200 people. There is music; there is no tent. Mother Nature, the senior partner in all growing endeavors, almost always cooperates. Along with various other items for auction was lunch for two prepared by and shared with the Quail Hill farm team. My college friend Mallory won the lunch and invited me along on a late September Wednesday.

Java Nation in Bridgehampton, a coffee roastery that for 18 years had been in Sag Harbor, celebrated its 20th anniversary earlier this month.

Duryea’s Lobster Deck in Montauk will remain open daily through the Columbus Day weekend for customers to order and eat on the Fort Pond Bay-front deck starting at noon. The takeout seafood market will be open through the Christmas holidays. Seafood can be pre-cooked for customers, upon request.

Champagne at Gig Shack

Sunday was a perfect Long Island day. For me it began at the Montauk Seafood Festival and ended on the North Fork, visiting Lenz Winery and the North Fork Table and Inn. It was sunny, but a tidbit chilly, with no wind, no traffic.

Saaz

1746 County Road 39

Southampton

259-2225

Lunch and dinner daily

Nick & Toni’s Brunch

Sunday brunch is served at Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton weekly from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., with an a la carte menu that includes specialty brunch cocktails.

Bistro Date Night

Thursday is date night at the Harbor Bistro in East Hampton, where a sunset view is included along with a complimentary glass of wine with each entrée ordered.

Football Season Specials

Fall at Fresh Hamptons

I love tuna. I love it in all of its incarnations, from the ice cream scooped blob on a deli sandwich to the fattiest slice of sashimi to seared on the grill and dabbed with a wasabi aioli. I like the cheap canned tuna at the supermarket and the fancy Italian tuna from a glass jar. I like it raw. I like it cooked.

On a sunny afternoon in Sagaponack, parents and food advocates gathered last week at the home of Erica and L.A. Reid to dine, shop, and listen to a panel discussion on healthy eating given by nutrition experts. The event, called “Food Fight: Get Into the Ring,” was hosted by Healthy Child Healthy World, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating safer environments for children and providing parents with access to educational information and solutions.

Katana

La Maison Blanche Hotel

11 Stearns Point Road

Shelter Island

749-1633

Dinner from 6 p.m., through

at least Labor Day

North Fork for Foodies

The eighth annual Foodie Tour of the North Fork will take place on Sept. 7. Sponsored by the North Fork Reform Synagogue, it will include visits to farms, vineyards, and beverage and food producers, where there will be cooking demonstrations, talks, and tastings.

Wine Tastings

A sommelier will lead participants through weekly wine tastings this month at Wainscott Main Wine and Spirits on Fridays from 4 to 7 p.m. and Saturdays from 1 to 4 p.m. Each week the tastings center on wines from different regions, different varietals, and at different price points, and will include at least one of the shop’s more than 50 rosé wine offerings.

Stonecrop Wines, a small New Zealand vineyard owned by Sally Richardson and Andrew Harris of Montauk, recently released its first  pinot noir rosé. The vineyard also produces sauvignon blanc and pinot noir, both of which can be found in restaurants and wine stores around the East End.

Seawater Grill

Gurney’s Inn

290 Old Montauk Highway

668-2345

Lunch and dinner daily

Contessa’s Cookbooks

Ina Garten’s extensive cookbook collection, housed at her East Hampton residence, where she also has space for a test kitchen and shoots of her “Barefooot Contessa” Food Network TV show, are featured in the September issue of Food Network magazine. The issue is on newsstands now. A list of Ms. Garten’s go-to cookbooks is online at foodnetwork.com/inaslibrary.

At Harlow East

Moby’s

341 Pantigo Road

East Hampton

527-5388

Dinner nightly

I never Google a restaurant before I review it. I like to approach it with a fresh, albeit gimlet, eye. Our first impression upon arriving at Moby’s was the unfortunate amount of trash in the parking lot and leading up to the front door. Secondly, there were the able-limbed young couple who hogged the handicapped parking space in front, sideways no less. Okay, I guess that does make them handicapped.