Long Island Restaurant Week Kicks Off

The Hamptons off-season has officially arrived.

Montauk Highway is no longer congested. The summer crowds have gone home. The locals are hunkering down for the coming winter. And business is hurting.

So when Muse in the Harbor chef and co-owner Matt Guiffrida finds himself stuck in his Sag Harbor kitchen this time of year, he really doesn’t mind. Instead, he says a personal welcome to Long Island Restaurant Week.

Beginning Sunday, November 4, the annual eight-day autumn promotion put on by WordHampton features more than 200 Long Island-wide restaurants offering at least three appetizers, three entrées and three desserts for a $24.95 prix fixe—an inexpensive offer for meals that might normally be out of reach for some East End diners.

“People don’t even know that we offer a prix fixe,” Mr. Guiffrida said during a telephone interview last week. “During Restaurant Week, they get to try your food and then realize, ‘I really like this restaurant.’ We see a lot of repeat customers from Restaurant Week. We see a lot of repeat customers within that week. We’ll see them on Monday and then on Thursday.”

The Plaza Café chef Doug Gulija gets the same customers as many as three times during the week-long promotion in his Southampton Village-based eatery, he said during a telephone interview last week. One of the original Restaurant Week participants, The Plaza Café skipped last year because Mr. Gulija wasn’t sure his restaurant would survive the winter.

“We didn’t do it for the simple reason that I didn’t think we were coming back in January,” he said. “Our lease was up, my wife had passed away, the economy stunk. Why do it if I’m going to be gone in two weeks? I said, ‘Forget this.’ I was cooking for L.A. Reid at the time. I was going to work for him full time.”

But despite all odds, The Plaza Café is back in full swing and ready for Restaurant Week with its regular prix-fixe menu, Mr. Gulija said, starting with the Long Island Seafood Chowder, Prosciutto-Wrapped Wild Pacific Shrimp or Organic Field Greens.

“You have to have a salad on the menu,” he explained. “Right now we’re doing something cool with it. We take Bosc pears and roast them buried in salt. It looks kind of weird if you open the oven. You just see a pan full of salt, but under that are the pears. They take on a sweeter texture. There’s a contrast between the cool salad and the warm pear on top with sundried cranberries and a balsamic vinaigrette with local honey and fresh herbs.”

For an entrée, diners can choose between four dishes. The Penne Bolognese incorporates five kinds of meat—including ground veal, lamb, beef, pork and sweet Italian sausage—making it one of the heavier meals on the menu. The Sliced Flat Iron Steak is a well-kept secret, Mr. Gulija explained. The cut, which is taken from the cow’s shoulder, is unexpectedly tender and cost-effective, he said.

Two Restaurant Week menu item choices—Herb Marinated Free Range Chicken and Horseradish Crusted Local Cod—feature skills the chef picked up during his studies in France, he reported.

“I went all the way there to learn how to roast a chicken,” Mr. Gulija said. “When they grade you as a chef, they always ask you to make an omelet and to roast a chicken. Kids these days look at that and say, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ But the reality is, if you don’t know how to make an omelet and roast a chicken, you don’t know how to cook.”

Mr. Gulija begins by marinating the chicken for a day with some lemon and fresh herbs, he said, letting the skin dry out in the refrigerator so it crisps up when roasted. It’s served over a wild local mushroom polenta, baby vegetables and topped with pan gravy made right after the chicken comes out of the oven.

The Horseradish Crusted Local Cod is lightly sautéed and baked in the oven. It’s the potatoes underneath, which are infused with roasted garlic, that put the dish “over the top,” the chef said. He learned to make them in France.

“I’m so bored of that dish it’s unbelievable,” he laughed. “It’s so simple, so boring, so whatever, but it works. Every time I hear someone say how great it is, there are so many dishes I put so much effort into, and then it’s this simple dish. It brings me back to reality. I have to have dishes people want. I actually learned this dish from a chef who’s no longer here, Patrick Clark, from Tavern on the Green. This is my take on that dish.”

Finishing the meal is a choice of Classic Crème Brulee, Apple-Pecan Cake—which Mr. Gulija said he’s made about 10,000 times since the restaurant opened its doors in 1997—or Chocolate-Vanilla Torte.

“My mom makes the torte for us. Don’t ask me how she does it,” Mr. Gulija said. “It’s two cakes, which she makes into logs and slices it. And when she puts them together, they come out in a cool design.”

Many of the restaurants will also offer à la carte items for an additional charge during Restaurant Week, including Muse in the Harbor, which opened at its new Sag Harbor location in March, Mr. Guiffrida explained.

The prix fixe items at Muse include a choice of four appetizers: The Muse “in da House” Salad, which is served in a hollowed-out tomato; Not Ya Mama’s Meatballs, featuring an Italian meatball, Asian meatball, Thanksgiving meatball and Swedish meatball; Eggplant Caponatina, Zucchini Flapjacks and Artichoke Hummus, his mother’s recipe; and the Soup of the Moment.

“The Soup of the Moment is, literally, the soup of the moment,” Mr. Guiffrida reported. “I’m never sure what it’s going to be. We try to keep it fresh and movin’.”

Next, diners choose from four entrées, which include Penne a la Gene, Tilapia Wienerschnitzel, The “Grecian Muse” Chicken and Turkey Meatloaf.

“That’s kind of our spin on comfort food and what you used to get when you were a kid,” the chef said. “It’s ground turkey, we add Craisins and vegetables and make a meatloaf, bake it and that gets grilled to order. We do a demi-glace here. It takes three days to make. We start with a stock and reduce it and reduce it slowly. We start with 55 gallons and end up with 5. And then the stuffing you’d get at Thanksgiving, we mix polenta so it’s a pumpkin and smoked gouda polenta, and call that stuffing.”

Mr. Guiffrida said he tops the meal off with fried sage.

“When it’s fried, it almost tastes like an artichoke heart,” he said. “It’s delicious.”

The dessert course is either cheesecake or Grandma G’s Zeppole, which arrives at the table in a brown paper bag filled with cinnamon sugar to shake before eating.

“My grandma, I’d spend the night at my grandma’s house as much as I could,” he said. “She’d always fry dough after dinner. Every culture, every part of the world has its version of fried dough with cinnamon sugar on it. This is my grandma’s version.”

For eateries across Long Island, the key to Restaurant Week is to resist cutting back on quantity or quality—guidelines both chefs say they follow—so customers come again and again.

“And people need to put their best foot forward and not create a menu they don’t have,” Mr. Guiffrida said. “You should feature your menu and your style of food and what you have. That way everybody gets a really good impression and how you do it. It always works out for us. And it’s very busy, otherwise I’d try some restaurants, too.”

Long Island Restaurant Week kicks off on Sunday, November 4, and will run through Sunday, November 11, at participating eateries across Suffolk and Nassau counties. Participating eateries will offer a three-course prix fixe for $24.95 every open night. On Saturdays, the menu will be offered until 7 p.m. For more information, call 329-2111 or visit longislandrestaurantweek.com.