East End Eats: Three Mile Harbor Inn

On Saturday night we ate at the Three Mile Harbor Inn in East Hampton, and it provided a salutary lesson: A restaurant is only as good as its chef, and, in the musical-chairs world of East End eating, you can never be sure which chef is where.

Also, one should never have preconceived notions about a place. I had eaten at the inn a couple of times in the past and had it pegged for basic prime-rib-and-two-veg - stomach-filling but unpoetic.

So, taken by surprise, my conversation during the meal consisted of variations upon "Hey! This is really good!"

Eye-Openers

If the food was an eye-opener, so were the prices. The Star has reviewed a restaurant a week this year, and a certain resignation had set in that good entrees average between $18 and $28.

Not down at Three Mile Harbor, they don't! A roast Long Island duck in a fruit glaze, which could not have been bettered, leaves the starting gate at $14.95 and romps home an unchallenged winner.

Starters begin at the reassuring prices of $2.50 for a house salad or $1.75 for a bowl of soup, with the highest price being $8.95 for steamed clams in a white wine or tomato sauce.

Pastas range from $9.95 for a linguine marinara to $16.95 for linguine frutti di mare, entrees from $11.95 to $16.95 (though a big filet mignon may cost you a little more).

Highly recommended as a night-before-paycheck bargain is the tuna steak on a bun, with comes with french fries and cole slaw and only costs $7.95. Now these are good prices.

The Three Mile Inn is a cozy, '50s sort of place with sheet music by Nat King Cole and Perry Como on the walls. When you're in the wood-ceilinged dining room you could be just about anywhere - it certainly doesn't have a Hamptons feel.

No Glitz

There's no Hamptons glitz about the waitresses, either, who greet regulars by name and keep a motherly eye on their customers.

So, what the chef, Steven Orban, had to do when he took over was keep the home-cooking atmosphere while at the same time introducing some zing and excitement to the menu. He seems to have done very well.

The entrees come with a choice of soup or salad, and the cream of broccoli soup of the day was excellent. It makes one thoughtful. A fresh-broccoli soup can contain only so many ingredients and take only so much time to make, so why should it cost $1.75 here and so much more elsewhere?

Wings Of Fire

The shrimp cocktail was shrimp cocktail - no surprises. The salads were fresh and crisp and unpretentious. The Manhattan clam chowder was full of clams and avoided any bitterness in the broth.

The wings of fire, we were warned, were not particularly fiery on this occasion. They weren't fiery, but they were certainly delicious, and, served with celery and blue cheese, fun and kind of silly.

The entrees were beautifully served on broad-edged white plates prettily drizzled with a latticework of different sauces and finely chopped parsley. This kind of appetite-arousing touch makes a world of difference in the enjoyment of the meal, but is, particularly in the less expensive places, often neglected.

Regulars Vouch

Two members of our party are regulars at the Inn and they say the chef has a particularly good touch with fish. Certainly the salmon, which was one of an extensive list of specials on the board, was very good.

They also spoke warmly of the lamb chops and the pot roast and the turkey pot pie and the meat loaf. And, as mentioned before, the duck was terrific.

The juicy garlic-pepper pork chops were really good, without a hint of the fibrous dryness that so often sends them to the stomach floor like a plummeting Titanic.

Desserts, too, were a mix of the homey and the imaginative.

There was a strawberry gateau made with an angelfood cake that was frankly too dry and a nice creamsicle sundae, made with orange sherbet and vanilla ice cream. The tiramisu was delicately original and had obviously been prepared with care and thought.

A rumor suggests that the Three Mile Harbor Inn may close for the winter months, which would be a pity. We really need good year-round restaurants like this that don't charge an arm and a leg.