Saaz

1746 County Road 39

Southampton

259-2225

Lunch and dinner daily

To say this end of Long Island lacks ethnic restaurants would be the understatement of the year. You can find seafood and burgers and pizza and “farm-to-table” restaurants galore, and pay mightily for any of them. But Indian or Thai? Okay, there’s Boa on Noyac Road, but it closes for the winter. Happily, this has changed with the recent arrival of Saaz, a lovely Indian restaurant on County Road 39 in South­ampton. Previously home to Greek Bites and Spiro’s, which were quite good Greek restaurants but shortlived, Saaz is attractive and friendly and, best of all, serves good Indian food.

The exterior is fairly nondescript, but the inside has been spruced up with murals of Ganesh (the elephant-headed Hindu deity), peacocks, and some very bejeweled lovers. There is a small bar and seating area to the left of the entrance, a comfortable beige and white dining room with gold curtains to the right, and a tented patio dining area outside. Pretty lanterns hang inside the tent, and amber-colored votives are on each table. Although there are two flat screen TVs over the bar, the sound is off and soothing Indian music can be heard throughout the restaurant instead. Whew.

The staff are as friendly as can be, from the greeting at the door, through service, to your departure. Even the waiters who aren’t waiting on you are delighted you are there. So refreshing.

As soon as you sit down you get some crisp, salty poppadum with little dishes of cilantro chutney and a spicy cumin-laced sauce for dipping. We began our meal with lamb samosas, vegetable samosas, and stuffed ragda patties. The lamb and vegetable samosas were pretty good, the pastry thick but light and crisp without being greasy. They were filled with ground lamb, potatoes, and peas. We also ordered some mango chutney and onion chutney for slathering on our samosas and other dishes during the meal. The mango was pretty standard, sweet and slightly salty, the onion chutney was finely diced onions in a sweet bright red sauce.

The stuffed ragda patty, a mashed potato patty on a bed of tangy yogurt sprinkled with chick peas, chutney, spices, peas, and cheese, was also good. The combination of sweet, tangy, soft, crunchy, cool, and hot, which can often be found in Indian cooking, was well represented in this dish.

For entrees we ordered saag paneer, yellow daal, tandoori chicken, kadai lamb curry, chicken tikka masala, coconut rice, and garlic naan.

The saag paneer, a combination of spinach puree with cubed, mild Indian cheese, was okay. It was fresh tasting, but the spinach puree was more like baby food texture. The yellow daal, yellow lentils cooked with onions, garlic, and ginger, was an excellent version — just a bit soupy and nicely spiced.

The tandoori chicken arrived on a huge oval platter and was an entire chicken, cut into serving pieces, and was easily enough for two people for a mere $20. It was very tender, mildly seasoned, and I think my friends are lucky they got to take home the leftovers. The kadai lamb curry, a Pakistani style curry with green peppers, onions, tomatoes, and green chilies in a thick gravy, was excellent, full of rich flavor with tender chunks of lamb.

The chicken tikka masala was also delicious. Tender strips of white meat chicken were served in a thick red coconut milk sauce with fenugreek. We got a big bowl of plain basmati rice, which is the perfect accompaniment with these saucy dishes, but the coconut rice was even better. The same extra long-grain basmati rice was flecked with cilantro and had just a bit of coconut milk for richness.

The garlic naan was also great — nice and chewy with a bit of smokiness from the tandoor oven — brushed with some garlic oil and sprinkled with parsley. All of the naans, parathas, pooris, and rotis are made in house.

Part of the fun of Indian food is sharing and pairing, playing with your food, sampling a bit of bread with a chutney or spicing up your tandoori chicken with the onion relish. The variety of vibrant colors, different temperatures and textures, soft and soupy or crisp and crunchy, all make the experience interactive, or, more appropriately, entertaining. If you are a vegetarian, you have hit the jackpot. There is such a great selection of vegetable options in Indian restaurants, from okra to eggplant to chickpeas and lentils, peas and potatoes, tofu, cauliflower, the choices go on and on.

Our waiter, Rohit, was delightful. He pretty much asked us about 23 times if we were enjoying our meal. He offered suggestions from every category and made sure our water glasses were always full.

For dessert we tried the kheer and paan kulfi. The kheer, a kind of soupy cardamom-flavored rice pudding, was good, although looser than most. It was super sweet, as it always is, and was full of crunchy bits of toasted pistachio nuts.

We were intrigued by the paan kulfi offering, as it was described as betel leaf ice cream. Betel nut and betel leaves are considered to be either close to cocaine in their effect, or medicinal and good for you, depending on who or what you believe. I figured at the very least it would energize us for the long drive home, just like a shot of espresso or piece of dark chocolate might. It was a pale green molded ice cream, cut neatly into four portions topped with pistachio nuts. It had a slightly tart flavor, but beyond that, we couldn’t quite describe it. Kathleen suggested a cross between green tea and pistachio ice cream, which is close enough.

The prices at Saaz are very reasonable. Soups, salads, and appetizers are $6 to $15, entrees are $14 to $36, rotis, pooris, and naans are $3 to $6, desserts are $7. This was the first meal I have had on the East End recently where four people could dine heartily, with a few beers, for under $50 each.

I was very fortunate a few years back to spend some time in India. The food, the culture, the people, everything about the country was mesmerizing, gentle, beautiful. When I get a serious hankering for Indian food I explore new places in New York City. Frankly, I’ve never been blown away, even by the more high-end Indian establishments. Saaz is a quite good, exceptionally welcoming restaurant that I hope gets the business it deserves. If you live in Southampton, it offers free delivery!

In researching the meaning of the word “saaz” I found numerous translations, from “sea” to “melody” to “musical instrument.” The restaurant’s motto is “the symphony of spices,” so lets go with melody. From now on, when I venture west, I am going to Saaz.

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

More than two decades ago, Andres Bedini and his then girlfriend, Cheryl, had an idea while visiting her parents in Sag Harbor that led them to completely switch gears — she was in law school and he was working as a financial analyst — and start their own business. Living in California, where Mr. Bedini said the coffee movement really began, they drank a lot of coffee. “On one of our summer trips back here, we’re sitting in the Main Street Tavern in Sag Harbor, and we’re like, ‘Man, we’d love a cup of coffee right now. How could there be nowhere to get coffee?’ This was 1992 — there was nowhere to get coffee.” They said to each other, “ ‘What if we opened up a coffee shop?’ ”

At the time, Mr. Bedini said, they were thinking along the lines of a “funky coffee house” with poetry readings. On the advice of coffee shop owners on the West Coast, they decided to roast coffee so they could control the freshness and how dark they wanted the beans.

They weren’t exactly coffee connoisseurs yet. “We loved coffee, but we didn’t know anything — nothing. I’m still learning and it’s been 20 years,” Mr. Bedini said, adding that they immersed themselves in education over the years, from seminars on roasting and making espresso to traveling to coffee-growing regions, where they would see how coffee was picked, processed, and shipped.

Bridgehampton was actually supposed to be the roaster’s location to begin with. They had picked out a spot at the Bridgehampton Commons, only to be told after months of negotiations that they couldn’t locate there because of the competition it would pose for Rossano’s, which once occupied Panera Bread’s location. “I was crying in the kitchen, ‘I don’t want to practice law,’ ” Ms. Bedini recalled.

Mr. Bedini found a spot in the Shopping Cove in Sag Harbor, an alleyway off Main Street. They weren’t able to open until Labor Day weekend.

Back in 1994, roasteries were still somewhat of a new experience. “It was hard at first. No one was buying beans back then. There wasn’t a big brew-at-home market. It was something maybe you picked up at the market. People still wanted regular coffee,” he said. Starbucks had only just opened its first store in New York City. “Starbucks helped us a lot. It kind of converted people from the deli coffee to the specialty coffee.”

Java Nation serves up coffees by country of origin; you won’t find flavored coffees there. Instead, the Bedinis rotate different coffee beans based on the time of the year. “Coffee from Honduras is unbelievable right now. They’re having an incredible year. Colombia is having a big rebound year,” he said. “Brazil is having a bad year for them. They usually produce 60 million bags a year. This year it will be 50,” he said, referring to the drought that affected the crop and caused the price of coffee to double in 90 days over the winter.

Java Nation stayed open through the winters from the start, but didn’t get busy year round until 1998. “That was kind of the time when Sag Harbor really started booming,” Mr. Bedini said.

“It was a lot of hard work,” Ms. Bedini said. “It was exciting. We were always learning something new. We had mistakes and successes and we learned from those. That kept it stimulating.”

The store has always kept a narrow focus on being a roastery, as opposed to a coffee shop, and wholesale is a large part of their business, especially since moving to Bridgehampton. Java Nation’s coffee is sold at Provisions and served at the Altantic Golf Club, for example. The store also ships whole beans and ground coffee by mail.

The key to staying in business for two decades, Mr. Bedini said, is adapting. “That’s just life. It’s constantly throwing you curve balls. Change is constant,” he said.

The past few years have been especially difficult. In 2012, Java Nation had to leave its home of 18 years when the landlord rented the space to another coffee shop, angering longtime customers. In July of that year, it opened in its more industrial space on Maple Lane near the Bridgehampton train station.

The following year, Ms. Bedini’s father, Wesley Carrion, who was 90, died after his house caught fire in Sag Harbor Hills. Mr. Bedini said Mr. Carrion had always championed their business.

Java Nation’s reincarnation is showing promise. “It’s a lot busier than I thought. We’ve got a lot of new customers,” Mr. Bedini said, adding that he also has more wholesale customers now. Open 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week, with little help other than in the summer, Mr. Bedini said the shop has taken new shape. Customers don’t linger like they used to in Sag Harbor, and the weekdays are busier than the weekends, the opposite of what was true in Sag Harbor.

Mr. Bedini said while he had thought about calling it quits, he is proud, but modest, about surviving two decades in business. “Your customers make you. If they still want you, it’s worth it,” he said.

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

In Montauk, 668 the Gig Shack is continuing its “champagne campaign” through the fall. Every Sunday beginning at 5:30 p.m., various types of champagne will be offered at half price, while a bubble machine pumps out bubbles, a la “The Lawrence Welk Show.” Children will be given their own bubble wands to blow bubbles.

Mexican Specials

The lineup of Mexican takeout specials at La Fondita in Amagansett is as follows: tacos rancheros and huarache, a dish of layered meat, refried beans, cheese, and corn flour on Wednesdays, chicken chipotle tacos, tostadas, or quesadillas, or posole on Thursdays, and on Fridays, chiles rellenos and pork or steak tacos. On Saturdays, the special is marinated steak tacos or roasted marinated pork tacos al pastor. The takeout shop is closed on Monday and Tuesday.

Happy Hour

Specialty cocktails are offered at two-for-one prices, and complimentary pizzas served at the bar at Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton during a 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. happy hour on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.

Oktoberfest Begins

Rowdy Hall restaurant in East Hampton starts its annual Oktoberfest celebration on Saturday with a festival from 3 to 5 p.m. featuring German bar snacks and a live radio broadcast from the eatery’s courtyard, which will be set up with picnic tables as a traditional German beer garden. Inside, there will be communal dining tables.

Each week through early October, Rowdy will offer a German prix fixe dinner special. The first, offered from Saturday through Wednesday, will be wienerschnitzel with sautéed black kale and lemon, with plum cake for dessert. Next Thursday, the new special entrée will be kassler rippchen, served with apple strudel, through Sept. 28.  The cost is $24. Oktoberfest beer specials will be available from Sunday through Oct. 5.

New in Sag Harbor

The Harbor Market & Kitchen will open early next year in Sag Harbor, in the Division Street space formerly occupied by Espresso’s.

Paul Del Favero, a chef, and his wife, Susana Plaza Del Favero, will offer takeout breakfast, lunch, and dinner items, as well as groceries.

Renovation of the building, which has been a market since the 1950s, including as Federico’s Superette, began during the summer and will continue through the fall.

A redesigned kitchen will include a wood-burning oven to be used to make pizza, sandwiches, and some Mediterranean-style specialties. The menu, which will change with the seasons, will also include daily soups, breakfast specials, and kid-friendly items.

The market will offer fresh produce, local eggs, and other staples.

Mr. Del Favero’s background on the East End includes stints at Nick & Toni’s and the Maidstone Arms. For the past decade or so, he has been chef de cuisine at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill in Las Vegas.

Beer and Bed in Montauk

The Montauk Blue hotel is offering a two-night stay special through October that includes a beer tasting at the Montauk Brewing Company. Rates begin at $249 a night.

Chefs Together

The American Culinary Federation’s Eastern Long Island Chefs chapter will host an event on Sept. 28 at the Westhampton Beach Country Club that will raise money for Slow Food’s Edible Garden project and the federation’s Chefs Move to School initiative. Both efforts involve local farmers and chefs in planting, harvesting, and cooking foods from gardens planted at East End schools.

More than two dozen chefs, farmers, and brewers will participate. Among the restaurants to be represented will be Noah’s, Fresh Hamptons, the Plaza Café, and the Jedediah Hawkins Inn. George Hirsch, a chef and TV host on PBS, will be the master of ceremonies.

Tickets are $75 for general admission and $125 for V.I.P. admission, which includes admission to a screening of the documentary “Shellshocked: Saving Oysters to Save Ourselves,” at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. It will be followed by a reception featuring sparkling wine and oysters.

Tickets may be reserved at acfelichefs.org or be purchased at the door.

At Cafe Max

At Cafe Max in East Hampton, two-for-one entrees are offered daily between 5:30 and 6 p.m. Cafe Max also offers a $22 prix fixe all night Sundays through Thursdays.

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.

This year brought the second annual Montauk Seafood Festival, very smartly held in two locations, the Montauk Marine Basin and Uihlein’s Marina. You could walk from one tent to the other or take a quick water taxi between them. Sponsored by the East Hampton Kiwanis and Montauk Friends of Erin, the two-day event had some of the best Montauk restaurants participating. In addition there were beers from Montauk Brewing Company, wines from Pindar and Duckwalk, and four bands playing throughout the afternoon. There were raw bars and shucking contests, crab races and beanbag toss for the kids, cotton candy for all.

Unfortunately, I suffered a major embarrassment immediately upon arrival. I sat on a sopping wet seat on the water taxi and spent the rest of the afternoon walking around with a hugely visible, extremely soggy behind. So if any of you saw someone walking around looking like that, it was not some old biddy who forgot her Depends and imbibed too much Driftwood Ale, it was just me, trying to do my job, nonchalantly, discreetly, with a big, wet heinie.

Admission was free. You trade in your real money for funny money, and that’s what you could use to purchase beverages and food. The array of fish was staggering, lobster rolls and crab sliders, Jonah crab claws, swordfish kebobs, fluke tacos, sushi, clam chowder, and Montauk Pearl oysters. Oh, and hamburgers, hot dogs, and corn for the kiddies who don’t go for seafood.

First I sampled the swordfish kebobs from Gosman’s. The delicious little cubes were dressed in a basil vinaigrette and sat on slices of tomato and watermelon. This was a good beginning paired with Montauk Brewing Co.’s Offland I.P.A. Near one tent, a band was playing way too many Jimmy Buffett songs, so I waddled over to the other side where Liquid Phase was rocking out a little harder. Next up was the Szechuan tuna from Hambonetyme Catering. This was excellent, although as far from Szechuan as Montauk is. The slices of lightly seared tuna had a tangy sauce on them and sat on a cucumber wasabi salad. Hmmm, this calls for a Driftwood Ale. At this point I noticed how exceptionally attractive the young men dispensing beer were. All of them. At both tents. Staggeringly handsome. Time for another beer.

Trying to decide what to eat with the last of my funny money was hard. The sushi from Zakura was beautiful, pristine slices of tuna, shiny little sweet shrimp on sushi rice, and more. The chowder from Gurney’s was going fast, and people were full of compliments about it. There did seem to be a good number of vendors offering blackened fish, a trend I thought had died 20 years ago, but is still delicious when done properly.

I opted for the fluke tacos from Gringo’s. As I watched the paper-thin fluke fillets being sauteed on a griddle, the nice lady assured me they would be ready in about five minutes. “No!” I wanted to cry, “they were done five minutes ago!” Flip, flip, flip, then chop, chop. Oh, no, I thought, that fluke has been murdered. Turns out, once you fry, fry, fry, and chop, chop fluke with the right seasonings and top it with some seriously good salsa, it’s damn good. Although, God forgive me, I allowed them to squirt some sour cream on it and it was even better.

 At this point, I had to stop eating, keeping in mind that a grand feast awaited us at the North Fork Table that evening. So I spent the next hour watching families with babies and dogs, motorcyclists and musicians, relaxing on the sand at Lynn’s Hula Hut. Yes, Sunday was a perfect Long Island day, wet bottom and all.

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.

The synagogue website, northforkreformsysnagogue.org,  has details. The event, with tickets at $25 (children 12 and under can attend for free), will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The self-guided tour begins at the Peconic Land Trust’s agricultural center at Charnews Farm in Southold.

Food TV

The George Hirsch Lifestyle show will be aired on WLIW-TV, Channel 21, on Mondays at 7:30 p.m. beginning on Labor Day. This week’s episode will feature visits with Scott Chaskey, farmer and director of Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, and Joe Realmuto, the chef at Townline BBQ in Sagaponack.

Asado Lamb Roast

A garden party and lamb roast will start at 4 p.m. on Monday at c/o the Maidstone Inn in East Hampton. The Living Room restaurant there will prepare an all-you-can-eat feast with appetizers, lamb, sauces, salads, and more. The cost is $75 per person, or half that for kids 12 and under. Alfredo Merat and Radio Europa will perform.

New Caterer

EatHamptons is a new catering company founded by Mark Fahrer, a chef whose clients have included the Food Network, the James Beard Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Trump family. Among Mr. Faher’s specialties are churrascaria (Brazilian barbecue), Indonesian rijsttafel (a rice table), and regional African cuisines. The chef can be contacted at EatHamptons@ gmail.com.

Katana

La Maison Blanche Hotel

11 Stearns Point Road

Shelter Island

749-1633

Dinner from 6 p.m., through

at least Labor Day

What is the best number of people to bring along for a restaurant review? Logic would suggest the more the merrier; you get a chance to try more dishes. But my recent experience at Katana on Shelter Island, with eight human, adult people, suggested otherwise. We were a regular little United Nations of know-it-alls — Chinese, African-American, British, friends who had lived all over Asia, and a cookbook author. All I ask of my guests is that we get a nice variety of food, they don’t ask me in front of the waiter what they should order, and, oh, please, let me taste the four desserts we ordered before you consume every drop. More on that later, or should I say, less on that?

The restaurant is a seasonal pop-up at La Maison Blanche on Shelter Island, a pretty inn that’s Victorian on the outside, chic and European on the inside. There is a little pool in back, a big wraparound porch with a gazebo, pentanque courts out front, Ping-Pong, and bikes to ride down to Crescent Beach. For a few years it had a pretty good French restaurant. This season it has Katana, a somewhat Indonesian-Japanese restaurant, serving the only sushi on Shelter Island.

On the night of our visit we sat out front on the spacious and pretty porch. Oops, I forgot to mention to my guests that you don’t start off by arguing with the waiter over the wording on the menu. This is supposed to be stealth dining, not loaded-for-bear, I-know-more-than-you-do umbrage. Sigh.

We began our meal with clam chowder, mussels, summer rolls, chicken gyoza, and bulgogi (Korean tacos). The clam chowder, referred to as “Kiki’s famous,” was pretty average for “famous.” It was rich and creamy. Standard stuff. The mussels were very good, cooked in a lemon grass and coconut milk broth with a bit of chili oil heat. The vegetable summer rolls would have been better if the rice noodle pancake hadn’t been soaked for too long. The rolls kind of fell apart when you picked them up. The filling was good though, a combination of mango, cucumbers, peppers, and vermicelli noodles — crunchy and sweet. The chicken gyoza were excellent. You could taste every ingredient. The dumpling wrappers were perfectly cooked, and a hint of citrusy lemongrass came through. The bulgogi were also excellent — two taco shells filled with little chunks of ribeye steak, a bit of cabbage and daikon radish for crunch, and a delicious drizzle of soy-lime dressing.

For entrees we ordered Java gado-gado, miso-glazed halibut, panang chicken curry, fluke sashimi, and tuna and avocado salad. The gado-gado, called “Indonesian Cobb salad” on the menu, was a good rendition of this dish, traditionally a cool combination of potatoes, green beans, cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs, and tofu. This one had the addition of spinach and fried shallots. The peanut dressing served with it was just right, with a creamy consistency and just a bit salty.

The miso-glazed halibut was another winner. The halibut was perched on top of grilled asparagus and had a slightly spicy red curry sauce on it. The clever addition of crisped wonton wrappers filled with truffled mashed potatoes was divine, if nontraditional. The fluke sashimi (sometimes called usuzukuri) was super fresh, with thin slices of fluke in tart ponzu sauce. The tuna and avocado salad, “Sleeping Dragon,” was one of the more beautiful platters of the evening. Thin slices of avocado were wrapped around slices of tuna, filled with salmon caviar. Another coil of avocado slices was wrapped around spicy tuna with a dollop of seaweed salad. The platter had two little pools of a light miso sesame oil dressing garnished with red and orange tobiko (flying fish roe).

The panang chicken curry (the dish that one guest insisted was incorrectly identified because it was a green curry, blah blah blah) was good, just not very exciting. Panang curry is a milder, often peanut-based curry popular in Malaysia. The chicken was tender and it was mixed in with peppers and bok choy and served with steamed brown rice.

The service on the night of our visit was good, but I got the sense that our waiter doesn’t like waiting tables. He was knowledgeable and efficient, but eye contact and smiles were not a part of his repertoire.

We ordered desserts, which our waiter said were not made in-house: mochi, mango creme brulee, and cheesecake. At this point, my friend Mitch and I left the table to play no more than 10 or 15 minutes of petanque. I lost. Mitch insisted he tried to let me win, but my playing was just too . . . well, it’s a silly game, anyway. Upon our return to the table we saw lots of empty dessert plates. “You took too long!” they cried like petulant children. “Do you all remember why we came here? So I could taste the food? I’m supposed to be working here!” said this petulant reviewer. Oh, well. The review of the desserts from my dining companions was “the cheesecake was okay,” “there was a piece of mango on the plate,” and “we don’t know what flavor the mochi was.” Not so helpful.

The prices at Katana are reasonable, and the chef only serves sustainable fish in accordance with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch list, an admirable philosophy. The wine list is short and also reasonable. Most bottles are in the $40 to $50 range. Prices are $9 to $16 for appetizers, $24 to $44 for entrees. Sushi and sashimi are $10 to $24. The aforementioned, never tasted desserts are $9. The restaurant is open through Labor Day, but has a lease for longer and may continue later into the fall if its reservation lines stay busy.

We had a delightful time at Katana in a pretty setting. It’s wonderful to see sushi and Indonesian style dishes on charming little Shelter Island. But no way am I ever bringing so many experts on future reviews!

Stonecrop Wines

The Stonecrop vineyard in Martinborough, New Zealand, which is owned by Andy Harris and Sally Richardson of Montauk, has released its first rosé. The Montauk duo will be on hand for a wine-tasting at the Domaine Franey wine shop in East Hampton from 4 to 7 p.m. tomorrow, and will be pouring not only this year’s rosé but a Stonecrop 2013 sauvignon blanc and a 2010 pinot noir.

Food Truck Derby

The chuck wagons will circle round at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton tomorrow afternoon for Edible East End’s Great Food Truck Derby. From 4 to 7 p.m., more than 20 food trucks will be serving those who purchase the $65 tickets, which entitle holders to one serving, along with beverages, from each truck, provided one can make one’s way to the front of what are typically very long lines. There will be regional wines and craft beer and juices. Among the participating food trucks are Eat Me Drink Me, Food Freaks, Hamptons Foodie, Morris Grilled Cheese, the Wandering Plate, Noah’s, and Silver Spoon Specialties.

Tickets for children aged 12 and under are $20. V.I.P. tickets, at $100, entitle holders to enter before the general admission crowd, at 3:30 p.m., and to a private food and drink tasting in the school’s Jeff’s Kitchen.

Canning Tips

Mark Vosburgh, who has been canning fruits, vegetables, soups, jams, and jellies for years, will give a presentation on home canning at the John Jermain Library in Sag Harbor today from 5:30 to 7 p.m. The discussion will include a history of canning, principles of safe food handling, equipment, and water bath and pressure canning methods.

Mr. Vosburgh has been awarded the title of certified master food preserver by the Cornell Cooperative Extension. Preregistration with the library is required.

Wagyu Beef

Sen restaurant in Sag Harbor is accepting reservations for a special dinner tomorrow night centered on Wagyu ribeye steak. The meal, for $85, will include a lightly seared five-ounce steak served with wasabi mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach garnished with Shisito peppers, along with a taste of Densin Natsu Daigingo, an unpasteurized seasonal sake.

Old School Favorites

A Southampton producer is making Old School Favorites, artisanal, all-natural homemade sweets for snacking or adding to ice cream or other foods. The company’s Szauce, a chocolate sauce, comes in dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and cognac flavors, as well as a version made with a sugar alternative. Old School Favorites Nutsz are California walnuts in a shell of maple syrup and sea salt. The products are sold at the Hayground and Southampton farmers markets, at Hampton Coffee Company in Southampton, the Green Thumb in Water Mill, and several other stores, as well as online at oldschoolfavorites.com.

“I was within a few hours of listing my tractors on eBay,” said Sam Lester of Pantigo Farm Co., in regards to the sale of his family’s farmland on Skimhampton Road in East Hampton. “But I remember waking up Sunday and thinking, ‘I’m not going to go out like that.’ ”

Mr. Lester began his farming venture in 2011 and operated a stand off of the Lester family land, which had been in the family since 1851. He had been helping out at the family farm stand for most of his life, but was unable to purchase the land from his family, and it was sold to another buyer in the spring.

“I was pretty upset with the farm leaving the hands of our family . . . but I didn’t want to give up farming because of circumstances beyond my control,” he said.

Mr. Lester turned to the community for help, and another local farmer came up with the idea of leasing land in Sagaponack. He found an acre parcel of farmland near Wolffer Estate Vineyard, but it had not been plowed for 10 years. He only began planting at the beginning of June, “extremely late in the season by farmers’ standards,” he said. He counts himself lucky to be open for the summer at all.

When Mr. Lester farmed off Skim­hampton Road, everything was in one area — the farm, the chickens, and the kitchen. Now he has had to rent out kitchen space to make his famous beach plum jelly and has had to relocate the chickens to new coops.

But despite all this change, he is still selling the same array of products as he did last summer. His stand in Saga­ponack is laden with zucchini, eggplant, radishes, corn, onions, blueberries, and tomatoes. He also sells jams, jellies, sunflowers, and eggs. Mr. Lester uses organic practices to grow his produce, and almost all of what is sold at his stand is either made or grown locally. New this season are baked goods made by Carissa Waechter of Carissa’s Breads. Ms. Waechter uses organic wheat grown by Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett and mills it by hand.

Although moving has been “bittersweet,” as Mr. Lester put it, there are some advantages to the new location. Being that the stand is right off Montauk Highway, he is sure to reap the benefits of Sunday vacationers stuck in traffic on the way back to Manhattan. The soil is also good Sagaponack loam of “top notch quality,” he said.

Mr. Lester is grateful to all his “loyal customers, friends, and family who have been there for me and who have helped me in my new endeavors.” As a close friend of his said to him, “When one door is closing, it’s opening on the other side.”

Pantigo Farm Co. will be open for the rest of the summer, Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Friday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. The stand is on the north side of the road, just west of the Allstate insurance office.

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.

Moby’s is a pop-up restaurant where the Spring Close House was many years ago. This space has also been the Farmhouse, some kind of piggy-named place, and the Laundry. It is a tricky location because it is fairly huge. Sometimes we refer to such places as Indian burial grounds, sacred spots where no white man’s business will ever succeed. Enter two attractive Aussies with several other restaurants and pop-ups under their belts and you have Moby’s, a somewhat nautically themed establishment. Maybe not “somewhat nautically themed.” It’s very nautical, with vintage charts on the walls, roping everywhere, buoys on the tables, boat scraps, and a lifeguard chair out back. You’ve entered Melville territory, maties, aaaargh! Well, actually, that would be Sag Harbor . . . details, details.

Upon entering you face the L-shaped bar and get a good view of the wood-burning oven. To the left is one dining room, beyond that a private room, and in the middle of it all, a small courtyard with another dining table and a huge tree growing through it. Walk towards the back and there are more tables, many family-style seating arrangements. Straight back is a huge patio with picnic tables and a lawn with many amusements for children who don’t care to sit still. There is a swing, the aforementioned lifeguard chair, and fireflies galore.

The decor is mostly black and white and the interior dining rooms have director’s chairs, cute but fairly uncomfortable. One guest noticed a clock on the wall, the time stopped at 4:20. Ha ha, I know what that means. These guys are hep cats!

The menu is very short and rather expensive. We began our meal with tuna crudo, octopus, and heirloom tomatoes. The tuna crudo was excellent. It was five thin slices of tuna on top of a mild avocado puree, topped with plenty of lemon juice, chili oil, flaky salt, and cilantro embryos. The octopus was also excellent, perfectly tenderized, then charred. It was served with a dollop of mild hummus, a few bright green and tasty Castelvetrano olives, and lots of chopped parsley. The heirloom tomato salad was pretty straightforward, a variety of sliced sweet Sungolds, one or two purple fellas, and a few other tomato slices not quite at their peak.

For entrees we ordered the roast half chicken, whole black sea bass, and one of the pizzas. The roasted chicken itself was well executed, with a nicely crisped skin and seasoned just right, but would have benefited from a bit of chicken jus. It was on a bed of wilted baby spinach with a few slices of zucchini and squash, which made for a somewhat watery plate. The spinach is billed as wild on the menu, but these bland, evenly shaped leaves had “Fresh Express, a division of Chi­quita Brands” flavor and appearance all over them.

The whole black sea bass was extremely small for $39 but t was tasty. It was served with about six shishito peppers and a piece of lemon. The lemon is on the menu as “charred lemon,” but I don’t think you need to list garnishes on the plate just because there’s nothing else served with it. It was at this point we noticed that there is no bread offered, and no rice or potatoes whatsoever. It’s nice to have the option of a carbohydrate.

The pizza, sadly, was not very good. The beauty of having a wood-burning oven is to achieve that blistering char, or at the very least, crispness on a crust. This pizza was a bit undercooked and bland.

The service on the night of our visit was fine. Our waitress was very nice, however, our entrees were served rapidly, before our appetizer plates had been cleared. The server put them down anyway. He also helpfully told me I’d probably want my fork back so I could eat the next course.

When we arrived, Moby’s was mostly filled with young families, who were later replaced by lots of attractive and apparently wealthy youngsters. Prices for appetizers and “to-share” plates are $15 to $25, pizzas are $19, main courses are $30 to $39, sides are $8, desserts are $12. The cheapest bottle of wine is $60.

There are three desserts, but two of them are really more like assembled items, one a root beer float, the other affogato (espresso over ice cream.) So we only tried the blueberry parfait. It was layers of spongecake with vanilla pudding, Balsam Farm’s blueberries, and whipped cream in a Mason jar. I’m pretty sure the spongecake was commercially made, and the pudding may as well have been Kozy Shack. It was ice cold and just okay.

We enjoyed our visit to Moby’s and some of the dishes were delicious. The casual, open atmosphere is fun for families and millennials with moolah. But the prices don’t jibe with the quality for this Queequeg.

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

Sunday evenings bring barbecue to the back bar at Harlow East, a new restaurant this summer in the former B. Smith’s space on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor. For $25 each, diners get grilled goodies, from barbecue beef to brisket and bratwurst, corn on the cob, and a glass of beer or rosé. Live music takes place each week as well. It all begins at 7 p.m.

Cheesemonger Comes East

Those who love the cheeses and accompaniments offered at Lucy’s Whey cheese shop from the Chelsea Market in New York City (and formerly of East Hampton) can get their fill on Fridays and Saturdays this month, when Lucy Kazickas will open a pop-up shop at the Lieb Cellars tasting room in East Hampton from noon to 7 p.m. The wine shop is at 26 Park Place, in the Reutershan parking lot in East Hampton Village. Ms. Kazickas will bring a selection of cheeses, fruit tarts, and the shop’s popular Montauk marlin dip, along with other items. Those who wish to request particular cheeses or other items from the store may place special orders by contacting Ms. Kazickas by Thursday of any week at [email protected].

East End Chefs

George Gounelas, the general manager and chef at the Old Stove Pub in Sagaponack, will present the next East End Chefs cooking class at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor. On Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., Mr. Gounelas will demonstrate how to make Greek dishes, including a beef or lamb gyro with tzatziki sauce, along with Greek salad, and an ice cream sundae with homemade cold fudge sauce for dessert. The cost is $20. Wine and water will be available for purchase. Space is limited; reservations may be made by contacting Lillian Woudsma at [email protected].

Harvest East End

A red-letter day for foodies and oenophiles is coming up on Aug. 23, when the annual Harvest East End takes place, this year at the McCall Vineyard and Ranch in Cutchogue. The fund-raiser organized by the Long Island Wine Council brings together 40 East End winemakers and 30 chefs for a wine tasting and auction and some local fare. V.I.P. tickets, and general admission tickets, at $125 each, are available. Details can be found at harvesteastend.com.

Chinese Cooking

Karen Lee will offer a class in authentic Chinese cooking on Wednesday at an Amagansett residence. The author of three Chinese cookbooks, Ms. Lee, a caterer and cooking teacher, was an apprentice to Madame Grace Zia Chu, who introduced authentic Chinese cooking to American cooks. The menu will include shu mai, ginger beef, shrimp with cucumber, Sichuan green beans, cilantro rice, and baked custards with strawberry sauce. The cost is $115. Students may bring their own wine. Reservations may be made at karenleecooking.com.