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From Eating Out
Posted by Jenni Ferrari-Adler, August 31, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Editor's note: Jenni Ferrari-Adler is guest-blogging on Serious Eats this week about her vacation in East Hampton, New York. Follow along: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
According to numerous blogs, magazines, and a July article in the New York Times, this summer's hottest Hampton restaurant is Tutto Il Giorno, which opened in May in Sag Harbor, New York. Scott Conant of the New York City restaurants L'Impero and Alto is the consulting chef. By all accounts, the food is excellent. The Times reviewer praised the food but found the service unaccommodating to the point of rudeness.
Propelled by excitement and trepidation (would I be poisoned for my unfashionable purse?), the 30-seat restaurant's no-reservations policy, and theater tickets to The Lady in Question at 8 p.m., we show up at 5:45. My mother and J. and I are seated immediately—which might have made us feel cool if we weren't the only people there. The waitress treats us warmly. The light-yellow room is the only place we want to be. We share a number of appetizers that pair a bracing bite with a lulling counterpart. Flavorful shrimp curl over peppery arugula over creamy potato salad; spicy sprouts top a dollop of burrata (fresh Italian cheese made from mozzarella and cream) on a small heap of heirloom tomatoes; piquant branzino tartare is studded with cubes of avocado. The entrées are good, too, if less exciting than the appetizers. Often the appetizers are my favorite part of a meal—sometimes I order multiple appetizers, forgoing the entrée altogether. Perhaps it's an attempt to sustain the tangy promise of the beginning, where the best is always ahead.
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From Eating Out
Posted by Jenni Ferrari-Adler, August 30, 2007 at 6:45 PM
Editor's note: Jenni Ferrari-Adler is guest-blogging on Serious Eats this week about her vacation in East Hampton, New York. Follow along: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Whenever I dine in one of the newer restaurants out here, I think of all the vanished restaurants that once inhabited the same space. Saracen used to be Sapore di Mare which used to be Charlotte’s Pond. The Laundry is now The Lodge, and the original Laundry has moved toward Amagansett. Wednesday night, my mother and J. and I go to The Lodge at 9 p.m. without a reservation. Despite it being August in the Hamptons, we’re seated immediately. Between the drizzly weather and the red-brick warmth of the dining room, we crave winter comfort food. J. orders meatloaf. My mother has a diet Coke—because she ate a big lunch at X2O Xaviers on the Hudson. I order tuna but check—this has finally, finally become rote—about the use of peanuts and peanut oil. The waitress returns to say the tuna is a no-go because the sauce contains peanut oil. I switch to salmon, even though I rarely like salmon as a restaurant entrée as much as salmon smoked on a bagel or raw and rolled in rice. This salmon ends up being really good—rare, seared with horseradish, and served over succotash. I imagine the Omega 3 fish oil smoothing out my complexion.
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From Eating Out
Posted by Jenni Ferrari-Adler, August 29, 2007 at 6:30 PM
Editor's note: Jenni Ferrari-Adler is guest-blogging on Serious Eats this week about her vacation in East Hampton, New York. Follow along: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
After the movie, still feeling a little burned by our meal at Wei Fun, J. and I head to Sam's Restaurant. Sam's is one of the few places that's been in the town of East Hampton for as long as I've been coming out, circa 1985, which is exactly what it looks like, and, better yet, sounds like. We go 12-inch, half-pepperoni, half-eggplant, garlic, and green olives. The eggplant ends up being breaded and fried, as in eggplant Parmesan, making me the fool who tried to be healthy and skip pepperoni only to eat a hefty quantity of fried food.
At home we are freaked out in the particular way of urban dwellers alone in a country house after a tense movie. We are used to the noises of sirens, crazy people, fighting drunks, and airplanes, but not these night noises of frogs and bugs. It wasn't Bourne—whose set-up is so specific, far-fetched, and not remotely about a couple being murdered in a country house—as much as the ten-plus previews we sat through before the movie, each one more terrifying than the last. The scenarios included: your husband is jailed in a foreign country (Rendition); your son is killed, forcing you into a life of crime (Death Sentence); and the disappearance of your little girl (Gone Baby Gone). Despite the pizza interlude, our adrenaline is high. It kind of sounds like someone is walking in the yard, or on the roof, or creaking quietly along the halls of the house itself.
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From Eating Out
Posted by Jenni Ferrari-Adler, August 28, 2007 at 7:30 PM
Editor's note: Jenni Ferrari-Adler is guest-blogging on Serious Eats this week about her vacation in East Hampton, New York. Follow along: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
Wei Fun in East Hampton, New York, is sleek, chic, and very white. Despite the number of frosted glass tables that look available, we're asked to wait 20 minutes at the bar area where there are three HDTVs. One doesn't work. One shows sports. Maybe on the weekend it's a genuine scene, but tonight the atmosphere of coolness seems strained. We are with my longtime friend, Barrett Foa, who is currently playing a Nazi stormtrooper in The Lady in Question at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. This is not the first time in his career he's played a Nazi. In fact, it's the fourth.
Turns out Daufu with Pea Shoots, Soy Beans, Lily Bulbs, and Spicy Sichuan Sauce is basically tofu with vegetables and brown sauce.
"Which are the lily bulbs?" I ask our waitress.
"I don't know," she says. "Maybe the brown things?"
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From Eating Out
Posted by Jenni Ferrari-Adler, August 27, 2007 at 6:30 PM
Editor's note: Jenni Ferrari-Adler is guest-blogging on Serious Eats this week about her vacation in East Hampton, New York. Follow along: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
The first meal of a vacation sets the tone. Here, lobster rolls.
What is it about lobster roll—the combination of luxurious lobster with humble mayonnaise and celery—that is so joyous, the embodiment of summer vacation? For some reason they fill me with nostalgia, even though I ate my first one as an adult. Sometimes my husband and I walk to Brooklyn Fish Camp in Park Slope, a bit of a cheat, because even if the lobster rolls there are awesomely tasty, when you leave you're still in Brooklyn, headed home, and with work in the morning.
This afternoon we drive out to East Hampton. My husband drives. As we turn off the highway in Southampton, I notice the sign for the Lobster Inn and remember out loud stopping there as a kid. "It was the kind of place," I say, "where you ordered a lobster and it came with sides: a half piece of corn, a baked potato. There was a salad bar. It had a terrific dock."
"A dock?" my husband says and makes a U-turn.
There's something important about the first meal of a vacation. It sets the tone. We always seem to put off that first meal until we're nearly at our destination, ravenous and in need of a cold drink, a view of the water, affirmation that we've arrived.
The Lobster Inn is all lacquered wood and ropes with shark heads grinning on the walls, and the view—the view—is of jostling fishing boats named Sea Fever, Gracie, Spirit, etc.
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