Off The Menu: Location, Location, Locations

Discard your mediocre prix fixe. Tell your waiters to stand up straight. And don’t blame your Southampton Press advertising agent if your bouillabaisse is bland.

Ham is back!

As I’ve watched the restaurant industry evolve from the outside these last two years, I find myself pondering again and again on three things: location, location, location.

It’s one of the most enduring maxims in business. For the restaurant industry, it has long been scripture. If you had a centerpiece location and an at least palatable menu, you were gold. A nook off the beaten path, on the other hand, could be a one-way ticket to the auction house for your barely used banquettes and guéridons.

But no more. In this age of social media over-sharing and super-interconnectivity between even vague acquaintances, there is no longer any reason a hidden gem should stay hidden for very long.

Allow me to jump geographies briefly to make the point with the insanely popular Roberta’s—a pizza joint in Brooklyn that inhabits a rundown block in a still largely industrial neighborhood, and a building so beleaguered that, if not for the perpetual line of tourists, trend-oids and self-anointed foodies wending through its doors day and night, you might scurry past with darting eyes and a secure grip on your coin purse.

This is a place “made” not just by its outstanding artisanal ingredients but by social media, restaurant- and food-focused bloggers, and websites such as eater.com.

No matter where a restaurant is, it need only attract the right crowd—summoned long before opening night, typically—to get the word out.

Of course, that door swings both ways. While location may not matter so much anymore, the quality of the offering must be far above “Yeah, that place is pretty good” for success to come in search. Everything nowadays is scrutinized, parsed, blanched and just plain raked over the coals in the foodosphere before anyone will #insertrestaurantnamehere.

I’ve been saying for years that the location issues in the Hamptons shouldn’t really be such a handicap. In a place this small, where word-of-overheard-at-the-beach is such a reliable virus, no good restaurant should ever toil in anonymity for long.

Yes, front-and-center greases the wheels, and places like 75 Main, Cittanuova and Magic’s Pub would be unlikely to argue, even while they may say they’d be loved no matter where they parked. There are plenty of examples where out-of-the-way locations and less-than-desirable properties have spawned thriving business: Navy Beach in Montauk and Estia’s Little Kitchen in Sag Harbor, say.

There are the places that have long been dubbed “jinxed” because they have gone through a regular cycle of failure and renewal. I say, in most cases, that turnover is a factor of miscues in the kitchen, not the address.

The proof is in the pudding. Station in East Quogue pounds it out where so many others came and went. The Highway restaurant and bar in East Hampton, despite inexplicably not even really changing its name or sign after a diner of the same name bricked—great concept, poor execution—has a pair of glowing reviews from The New York Times and Newsday, and a full reservation book in its pocket.

I can’t quite decide if the food cart/truck industry has tossed the “location, location, location” adage into the grease trap, or gone to school on it. The most popular food trucks and street carts in New York City and Los Angeles now tweet, blog and GPS their movements from day to day, even hour to hour. The social media wildfire of customers’ photos of burritos and kebabs dripping a rainbow of oils, salsas and sauces has made celebrity chefs out of people like Sammy Noor, who once would have spent a decade building up a modest business, as the halal superstars on Sixth Avenue did in the 1990s. Perhaps “location, location, location” helped them a bit, eh?

Last Friday, I strolled through the Elks Lodge fairgrounds with a notoriously fussy foodie friend, peering across the counters of the two dozen or so food trucks and stands that had set up for the Long Island Food Truck Rodeo. This event was no Red Hook Ballfields, but there were flecks of relative renown in the mix, lots of signs announcing “best of” awards, and a respectable mix of genres.

Latin food has long driven the growth of the food truck—they’re pretty much just called “taco trucks” in California, whether they serve tacos or not—and our favorites were the empanadas from Island Empanada and the Cubano sandwich from Corazon de Cuba, both of which are just skirmishers from successful restaurants elsewhere on Long Island—Lake Ronkonkoma and Long Beach, respectively.

Other home runs were the lobster macaroni and three cheeses from Soda-licious, and the truffle fries from Gill Boys. The Inn Spot On The ... Go, much like its Hampton Bays restaurant, was delicious across the board. Cannolis from Centerach-based Kannoli King for dessert were worth the wait, even if two overstuffed individuals could only share one for their fifth course of the day.

These food truck gatherings—there’s another one, with a more gourmet twist, taking place later this summer in Bridgehampton—are my favorite way to eat these days, as long as there are some picnic tables to sit at. It’s like having all the best restaurants in town clustered within walking distance of each other, and no wait for tables or need for reservations.

I feel like the local towns and villages are missing out on a great service for our residents with the currently sparse licensing of food trucks to set up shop at our beaches. There should be three food trucks at every local beach that doesn’t have its own snack bar.

I know restaurants pay a premium for rent out here, and competition from a truck that has little overhead seems a kick to the shins. I, myself, rely on restaurant profits to pay my rent. But the fact of the matter is, people ain’t leaving the beach in the middle of a summer day to go to a restaurant unless they want to eat at a restaurant. If food on their lap is fine, they’re going to bring it with them, or go to a beach with food offerings. So why not let them have their beach and eat at it too?

It’s good to be back. We’ll see how the summer is shaping up next week.

I’ll have the salmon!