East End Eats: Sunset Beach

The French have a word, d‚paysant, to describe the sort of trip - not necessarily very far away - that refreshes the spirit and makes you feel as if you have gone to a foreign country.

A voyage to Shelter Island in the middle of August-in-the-Hamptons is a step in the right direction, but a visit to Sunset Beach - an outdoor lotus-eatery on the island's graceful Crescent Beach - will take you miles away to some speck of an island in the Caribbean.

The open-air restaurant is a tentlike creation on top of a building at the water's edge. A bar and two dining rooms rise in three steps around the trunk and branches of a huge tree and the place is lit by strings of lanterns. The lively if rather insistent music has a Latin flavor, but it segued into Billie Holiday as the evening mellowed.

Laid-Back Caribbean

The clock here is definitely on Caribbean time - our reservation was for 7:45 but we waited at the bar level until nearly 8:30 before being seated.

That was okay, we were in a good mood (this should be a prerequisite for dining here), we had all the time in the world, and the view was spectacular.

The maitre d'hotel comes straight from five years at Odeon in Manhattan, which maybe accounts for some of the place's laid-back, downtown style.

As dusk turned to night and the sunset faded, the stars were matched by a half-moon of lights twinkling from the North Fork.

Prices: Lower Than Local

The wine list is small but well-chosen and reasonably priced. We chose the cheapest white wine on the list, a Les Chanvilles Macon-Villages. It was $18 and very good, which augured well for the other choices.

Prices at Sunset Beach are generally lower than equivalent South Fork prices; appetizers are from $7 to $12 and entrees from $17 to $24.

A mixed green salad with herbs was large, fresh, and carefully dressed but the slices of melon which accompanied prosciutto were a disappointment, particularly as good melons are one of the joys of the end of August.

Warm crabmeat served with mustard crisps was an interesting and unusual start to a meal, while the smoked salmon with candied orange creme fraiche was fabulous.

Ze Chicken? Non

Maybe because it was the end of a frantically busy season, the waiters, many of whom were French, were a little distracted. (This was mitigated by the fact that they were adorably charming and cute beyond belief.)

One in particular, who looked like a young Gerard Philipe, seemed to be present more in substance than in spirit. He arrived at our table with four entrees. "Ze shrimp," he said with a flourish. Yes, that was right. "Ze salmon!" No, no one ordered that. "Ze chicken?" No, sorry.

He then stood there looking completely baffled until we suggested it was probably an order for another table. "Aah!" he said in delight, and wandered off in search of a table with hungry-looking people at it.

Island Asparagus

Ze shrimp - actually chilled tiger prawns with pickled cucumber and avocado - were fine when we finally obtained our allocation, but upon consideration would have been better as an appetizer, cold entrees always being somewhat of a letdown.

(Gerard Philipe passed our table five minutes later, still clutching a plate of salmon, glancing from right to left with an air of desperation.)

Far more exciting was the loin of veal with mushroom fricasee, which was tender and smokily grilled. The sweet, intensely flavored asparagus that accompanied it tasted like the ones I remember from my youth - they were so different from supermarket asparagus that I believe they must have come from some Shelter Island garden.

First-Rate Vacation

The roast duck came with a plum compote and was tender and moist with crackling skin, its fat evaporated away until all that was left was a brittle shell of flavor. A soy-glazed rare tuna with sweet onion puree was also first-rate.

Most of the desserts having run out, we tried just two. They were beautifully presented, as were all the dishes, but the chocolate mousse did not have enough chocolate flavor and the peach crisp wasn't.

It says a great deal about the charm of Sunset Beach that, in spite of a three-quarters-of-an-hour wait for a table and an entire waitstaff who might have mistakenly ingested Maui wowie for lunch, our mood went from good to better to elated. The evening really was a vacation.

Now The Bad News

And now the bad news: We learned as we were leaving that on Labor Day Sunset Beach would close for the season - presumably the whole tented aerie will be dismantled and put away until spring.

But I suggest you take your 1998 diary, pick a sunny day in August when you know you'll have had it up to here with Hamptomania, and mark it "Escape to Shelter Island to d‚pays‚ at the Sunset Beach."