Food

    The Plaza Cafe in Southampton will participate in Cancer Awareness Month by donating $5 from every prix fixe dinner served on Wednesdays throughout  October to two local organizations, Lucia’s Angels and the Ellen Hermanson Breast Center.

    It’s that time of year . . . kind of. One day it’s 70 degrees, next day it’s 42. This puts me in the mood for casseroles. Hearty or light, rich or delicate, it’s a good time to utilize the end-of-season corn and tomatoes and incorporate them into whatever kind of casserole, stew, or chili you like.

    It could be a rich, cheesy penne dish like one from the famous Al Forno restaurant in Providence, R.I., or the light and spicy chicken chili recipe that I wrestled from my good friend Beverly Kazickas.

    A bite of a Tate’s Bake Shop gluten-free chocolate chip cookie brought a woman to tears at the International Fancy Food Show in July, said Kathleen King of Water Mill, the company’s founder and owner. “Oh my God, I never thought I would be able to eat a good cookie again,” the woman told her.

    Those whose appetite for films was not satiated by the Hamptons International Film Festival might well consider Rowdy Hall when planning dinner and a movie. Beginning on Monday, the East Hampton restaurant, just a few doors down from the theater, will once again offer discounted movie tickets, at $8.50, to diners who purchase an entree for lunch or dinner from Sundays through Thursdays. For burger fans, a $20 special offered at dinnertime Sundays through Thursdays, also beginning on Monday, will include both the burger and a movie ticket.

Afternoon Tea

   The very much anticipated Topping Rose House is finally open. The meticulously renovated and restored former Bull’s Head Inn is not completely finished but the restaurant is up and running, smoothly and beautifully.

   A three-course prix fixe at the Gulf Coast Kitchen, a restaurant at the Montauk Yacht Club in Montauk, has a Creole take. The menu for the $29.95 special changes weekly.

   It takes Fred Overton, the East Hampton Town Clerk, two days to make 30 gallons of chowder. He does the kitchen prep the day before and puts everything together in two 15-gallon vats on the morning of the East Hampton Town Trustees’ Largest Clam Contest.

    Fall harvest time brings lots of celebrations of local bounty. The Wolffer Estate Vineyard harvest party will take place at the vineyard in Sagaponack on Oct. 7 from noon to 5 p.m. The rain date is Oct. 8.

    It takes a family to make a bagel — and to run a bagel mini empire.

    “Izzy was the bagel maven,” Paul Wayne, a partner in Goldberg’s Famous Bagels in East Hampton and Montauk, said of his grandfather, Izzy Goldberg, who started the family in the bagel business in the years after World War II.

    As he talked on Sept. 16, he cut a brisket into paper-thin slices. Rosh Hashana would begin at sunset, and the demand for brisket, corned beef, and pastrami was strong. As was the call for challah bread, which the store continued to make throughout the day.

Opened, Closed

    Tom Colicchio opened his restaurant at the Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton last weekend. The restored 1842 Greek Revival mansion will also house a luxury inn. The 50-seat eatery will have a locavore focus, with a vegetable-centric menu that includes dishes made with produce grown on an on-site garden plot.

    I moved recently from East Hampton Village to Sag Harbor. All of my friends think I should miss my oceanfront childhood home but I really don’t. I now have my dream kitchen. It’s big enough for a table that will seat six, it has a fireplace, and there’s a six-burner Garland stove, a dishwasher (a small luxury I have been living without for two years), and windows galore.

   Where most people’s houses are landscaped by trees, shrubs, or flowering plants, Michael Cinque’s, set back from Montauk Highway opposite an Amagansett gas station, is surrounded on three sides by grape vines, 100 or more, neatly trained against wire trellises but growing so closely up against the windows that you can reach right through and touch them.

    Now that Labor Day has passed, restaurants are rejiggering for the fall season.

    Beginning next Thursday, Bostwick’s Chowder House in East Hampton will be serving on Thursday through Sunday, opening at 11:30 a.m. for lunch, and continuing through the dinner hours.

   About two dozen members of the Conservative Synagogue of the Hamptons in Sag Harbor celebrated their new cookbook recently with a “Munch ’n’ Brunch” at the home of Marcy and Emil Braun in Bridgehampton. In attendance were many of the women and men who provided the recipes, who brought tastes of dishes including flourless gateau de mousse chocolate, mushroom quiche, Aunti Gertie’s apple pie Canarsie, and Egyptian charoset.

It’s Marvelous

    Tomorrow from 4 to 7 p.m., the new Mary’s Marvelous store on Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village will have an opening party featuring free hors d’oeuvres, and samples of smoothies and baked goods.

    The new store, where Bucket’s deli used to be, will be the second location for the takeout food shop first opened by Mary Schoenlein in Amagansett 10 years ago.

    Kathleen King, who has forged a baking empire with her goods now sold under the Tate’s Bake Shop name, garnering accolades from foodies such as Ina Garten and Rachael Ray, will sign copies of her new cookbook, “Baking for Friends,” at the mint-green painted shop on North Sea Road in Southampton on Saturday from 3 to 5 p.m.

Swallow East

474 West Lake Drive, Montauk

668-2500

Noon to 11 p.m., daily, late bar menu available until 1 a.m.

Seasonal

   What fun we had at Swallow East the other night! Winston Irie was playing, the evening was beautiful, and the restaurant was packed but not insanely, unmanageably so.

   There is news for the Mary’s Marvelous fans out there who have been wondering when Mary Schoenlein, the Amagansett food shop’s owner and executive chef, would open the doors of her new location on Newtown Lane in East Hampton Village.

   Smokin’ Wolf

221 Pantigo Road

East Hampton

324-7166

Monday to Friday from 5 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday from noon

   Four men on a mission delivered 34,000 pounds of fresh local produce last year to food pantries in Southampton, Sag Harbor, Springs, East Hampton, and Amagansett, the harvest of the three-acre East Hampton Food Pantry Farm on Long Lane.

    The farm, now in its fourth year of operation, has recently built a 34 by 100-foot hoop house, which will extend the growing season into the fall and winter, increasing the range and volume of food it can produce for those in need.

Cait’s Baked

    Caitlin Baringer, who grew up in East Hampton baking with her mother, Jane Baringer, has returned to her hometown from California to establish Cait’s Baked, a baked goods business.

St. Luke’s Favorites

    Ellen White, formerly the executive chef at the Silver Palate gourmet store in Manhattan, will lead a team of cooks at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton on Monday as they prepare frozen, to-go entrees from recipes in a new church cookbook called “Favorites of St. Luke’s.”

    The group will cook up Bonac clam chowder, carrot-ginger soup, chicken pot pie, turkey chili, clam pie, and “Jonda’s Meatloaf,” a recipe that appeared in a 1948 St. Peter’s Chapel cookbook. The chapel is a summer adjunct of St. Luke’s in Springs.

Danny and Barbara’s Best Trout Recipe

    This recipe is an example of the marinade being added after the food is cooked. The original recipe, from my friend Daniel Zwerdling, suggests letting the fish sit at room temperature for four to six hours, then refrigerating for three to four days. I do neither. I serve the fish a few hours after preparation. It is a lovely first course.

    Serves six.

6 trout fillets

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 cup flour

2 Tbsp. yellow onion, chopped

1 cup dry white Vermouth

1/2 cup orange juice

   If you are like 99 percent of the population out here in the summertime, you are probably grilling and barbecuing many of your meals.

   There are a few basic rules if you want to go into business: Pick something that people want or need, with a strong track record (7,000 years is good), and with an immediate following willing to serve as your guinea pig/test pilots.

    The latter precludes the funeral business, which leaves only beer.

   The Great Bonac Fireworks over Three Mile Harbor on Saturday night will be the occasion for special events at two waterfront East Hampton restaurants.

Bell and Anchor

3253 Noyac Road

Noyac

725-3400

    Our dining experience at Bell and Anchor the other night was simply splendid. The food was fresh and creative with heavy emphasis on raw bar items and local ingredients, the service impeccable, and the view and atmosphere lovely.

While it Lasts

    At Michael’s at Maidstone restaurant in Springs, a special on grilled steak or lobster is available daily from 5 to 6 p.m., or all night at the bar, but only while supplies last. The special is just $19.95. Reservations are required for those planning to eat in the dining room.

New in Noyac

    The Bell & Anchor, new this year at the Mill Creek Marina on Noyac Road in Noyac, has a menu featuring oysters, lobsters, pork belly, and more, and is serving dinner six nights a week beginning at 5:30. The restaurant is closed on Mondays.

    So you just got home from work, you’re hot and tired. And now it’s time to cook dinner, heating up your kitchen. If you’re like me, with no air-conditioning, this can turn a pleasant daily task into a grim one. If the beginning of July has given us record-breaking heat, imagine what the rest of the summer may be like. Solution? Salads for supper! Cool, refreshing, balanced, healthy salads.