Food

    Over the last two months I have spent several Sunday afternoons with some of the most relevant and important people in our community — farmers and fishermen, brewers and winemakers, restaurateurs and shellfish growers. The reason was a series of panel discussions presented by the Peconic Land Trust and sponsored by Edible East End. The theme for the four panels was “Long Island Grown: Food and Beverage Artisans at Work.” This was the fifth year that Peconic Land Trust has presented these talks, titled “Conversations With . . . ,” at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton, a hidden gem.

    With local artisans purveying such homemade comestibles as cheese, sea salt, and wine, it was only a matter of time before the production of spirits found its way to the South Fork. As the zeitgeist would have it, two such projects have emerged at the same time, and one local farm is selling product to a Brooklyn ginsmith.

Cooking at Church

    Marco Barrila, the chef and owner of Insatiable Eats in Southampton, will present a program highlighting the cuisine of his native Sicily at an East End Chefs program at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor tonight at 6:30. The menu will include an appetizer of eggplant, tomatoes, capers, and olives in an agrodolce (sweet and sour) sauce, followed by pasta with tomato, basil, fried eggplant, and oven-dried ricotta. The meal will conclude with a semi-frozen lemon and strawberry dessert.

    The witty writer Dorothy Parker once aptly described eternity as “two people and a ham.”

The heat was on Saturday as hundreds of hotheads descended on a field at the Hallockville Museum Farm in Riverhead for the debut year of the North Fork Horseradish Festival.

Easter Sunday

    Numerous restaurants will offer special meals for Easter Sunday.

    The owners of Naturally Good Foods and Cafe in Montauk are planning to open a restaurant on the hamlet’s Main Street, opposite Herb’s Market in the space formerly known as Mtk Cafe.

    Like their shop and cafe on South Etna Avenue, the restaurant will serve healthful food, but this eatery will stay open for dinner service. There will be beer and wine, which will be “all organic and biodynamic,” Lauren Katz, one of the owners, said Sunday.

Hello Again, Spring

    The expanding list of restaurants reopening for the season rings a few more death knells for the extended winter.

    Bostwick’s reopens tonight for its 22nd season. The seafood spot on Pantigo Road in East Hampton will be serving lunch and dinner beginning at 11:30 a.m. Thursdays through Sundays. There will be fresh local seafood and daily blackboard specials, and seating is available next to a cozy fireplace. Favorites that remain on the menu include a blackened fish taco, clam roll, seafood pasta, and crab-stuffed flounder.

    I recently had the great, good fortune to spend an evening dining at Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., followed by a farm tour the next morning. And I shall say right now that this was the most spectacular, staggeringly creative, delicious meal I have ever had in my life.

    On Aug. 1, 1965, Craig Claiborne held a picnic on Gardiner’s Island that has come to be known as “the grandest picnic of all time.” He invited a pantheon of French chefs to prepare the meal — Pierre Franey, his friend and collaborator, who was then executive chef at Le Pavillon, Roger Fessaguet from La Caravelle, Jean Vergnes from the Colony, Rene Verdon, then chef at the White House, and Jacques Pepin, who had been personal chef for Charles de Gaulle before coming to New York to work for Franey at Le Pavillon.

    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.

    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

    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.

    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.

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.

    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.

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.

Coffee is, without a doubt, one of those drinks that people are extremely particular about.

    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.”

Reopening Celebration

    A wine dinner tomorrow night will mark the reopening, after a month of renovations, of the Living Room, which is the restaurant at c/o the Maidstone inn in East Hampton. A wine-tasting in the cellar will be followed by a sit-down dinner, with seatings at 6:30 and 7:30. A maximum of 14 diners can be accommodated at each, so reservations have been recommended.

    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.

Mary's Marvelous, a favorite Amagansett and East Hampton coffee, pastry, and lunch spot, received some love on Twitter this week from the actor Alec Baldwin, a regular customer when he is staying at his South Fork house.

On Tuesday, Mr. Baldwin — who tweets as @ABFalecbaldwin to some 1.07 million followers — shared a link to a story in The Guardian about the dwindling number of local pubs in the United Kingdom and wrote: "If Mary's in Amagansett closed, I'd be bummed. #savethepubs."

Coffee Farmer Visits

    The Hampton Coffee Company in Southampton will have a visit tomorrow from Ric Hariyanto of Sriwijaya Coffee, who grows coffee beans in northern Sumatra that are imported for Hampton Coffee brews.

    From 3 to 5 p.m., Mr. Hariyanto will be at Hampton Coffee’s Coffee Experience store to discuss his life, his coffee farm, and the beans during a slideshow and talk. He will answer questions and provide tastes of his Dolok Sanggul coffee.

Culinary Artisans Speak

    When you go through the grocery store this time of year, do you just walk by the odder, wintry vegetables and head for the simpler, “safer,” more familiar ones like zucchini, lettuce, string beans, and so on? I am guilty of this, too. It is so easy to just grab those people-pleasers. You can do anything with zucchini year round, and who doesn’t like green beans with shallots or toasted almonds?

    The indoor farmers market held at the Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton on the third Saturday of each month will take place this weekend beginning at 11 a.m., with the closing hour now extended to 3 p.m.

    Among the vendors that have participated are Lorna’s Nuts and Goodies, Amagansett Sea Salt, East Hampton Gourmet, Plain-T Ice Tea, Cavaniola’s Cheese Shop, and Gula Gula Empanadas.

    What kinds of foods are our athletes, their families, and fans eating in Sochi at the 2014 Winter Olympics? Well, you needn’t fret over the nutritional needs of the United States ski team. They are not residing in the athlete’s village, but are in the mountains above Sochi cocooned in comfort with private chefs attending to their every culinary need. Almost. It actually appears that they are eating a lot of Asian-inspired meals full of rice noodles and fish sauce.

The overall atmosphere at O’Murphy’s was warm and welcoming. Located in the heart of downtown across from the circle, O’Murphy’s is small and cozy, with a bar to the left of the entrance and tables with green-and-white-checked oilcloth table­cloths all around. There are two flat screen TVs in the bar area and enough decorative flotsam and jetsam to cover most other surfaces.

    Valentine’s Day is approaching, and our minds turn, if not to love, then chocolate. Registration is under way for a chocolate truffle-making workshop to be offered by the Peconic Land Trust at Bridge Gardens on Mitchell Lane in Bridgehampton on Feb. 15.

    From 2 to 4 p.m., Rick Bogusch will demonstrate the easy steps to make a basic truffle as well as truffles flavored with spices and liqueurs, rolled in cocoa powder and nuts, and dipped in melted chocolate. Samples and recipes will be provided. The cost is $10 a person, or $5 for Bridge Gardens members.

    Coming right up is the January weekend devoted  not only to a contest between football teams but to a fair bit of noshing — indeed, of pigging out.

    Chicken is a delicious, economical meat accessible to all. Chickens are filthy, germ-ridden animals we shouldn’t touch. Which do you believe? Both are true. Sadly, chicken “production” in this country has been steered in the same direction as hothouse tomatoes; the desire for more profit and efficiency has produced utterly tasteless, Vegas showgirl-breasted foulish fowl. However, we are very lucky out here having such fine establishments as Iacono Farm in East Hampton and Browder’s Birds in Mattituck, to name just two poultry farms.