Foodstuffs: North Fork Seafood, New Mexican Eatery And An App For Hiring A Chef At Home

Duryea’s Orient Point, which debuted last season, reopened for 2021 on May 20. The waterfront restaurant offers indoor and outdoor seating with a Mediterranean-themed seafood-centric menu featuring several of Duryea’s signature dishes such as the lobster Cobb salad, lobster roll, tuna tartar and fresh crudité.

In addition, Mediterranean dishes like hummus, green tahini, salted-cod tarama, Greek olives and grilled flat bread are also served, along with Spanish octopus, crab falafel croquettes, Greek melon salad, falafel gyro and local black bass with Greek-Thai salad. Duryea’s Orient Point offers several transient boat slips at the marina accommodating up to 75-foot vessels available on a first-come first-served basis. Duryea’s Orient Point is located at 40200 Main Road, Orient, and is open noon to 10 p.m. Monday, Thursday and Friday and Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Beginning Memorial Day, the restaurant will be open seven days per week. For more information, visit duryeaop.com.

The 1770 House Restaurant & Inn in East Hampton is now serving a new $85 three-course prix fixe dinner menu of seasonal dishes by chef Michael Rozzi in the main dining room, downstairs Tavern and outdoors in the garden and on the patio. The tasting-style menu includes a first course created to highlight local farm stand ingredients, a second course appetizer and third course main. Some of the first course options include beef tartare, chilled spring sweet pea soup and a local spring greens Caesar. Second course includes a spicy Montauk fluke tartare, steam Bans Island mussels with Calabrian chilies, crispy softshell grab and seared Hudson Valley foie gras. For the third course, choose from seared Montauk sea scallops, roasted Scottish salmon, braised rabbit leg, pork rib chop or striploin.

Desserts ($12) include warm chocolate soufflé cake with rum caramel, chocolate sauce and malted milk ball ice cream; ricotta cheesecake with blackberries and dried orange in a hazelnut-graham cracker crust; sticky date cake with toffee sauce and salted caramel gelato; and heirloom carrot cake with raisin-vanilla chutney, curry-lime leaf anglaise and candied ginger gelato.

Also new to the menu are optional sharing dishes for the table, including Widow’s Hole oysters (from Greenport) on the half shell with wild onion flower, cucumber and pink pepper mignonette ($22 half-dozen/$38 dozen); Regis Ova California supreme sustainable caviar, 1/2 ounce ($60); and Italian milk burrata with summer truffles, pistachios, local honey, house-made fennel pollen and sea salt focaccia ($24).

The take-out menu continues with dining room and Tavern favorites including The 1770 House Burger and meatloaf, cocktails to go and wine selections from the 250-bottle wine list overseen by wine director Michael Cohen.

The 1770 House Restaurant & Inn is at 143 Main Street, East Hampton. For reservations or information call 631-324-1770 or visit 1770house.com.

Rita Cantina has opened in Springs, serving up modern Mexican dishes along with an extensive tequila-focused bar program. Owner and chef Eric Miller, known for his restaurants like Bay Kitchen Bar, brings his passion for Mexican cuisine and the East End with the help of partners, Adam Miller, who is behind the innovative bar program, and Marc Miller, who handles operations. The team at Rita Cantina welcomes both locals and visitors alike for cuisine that showcases a bounty of fresh, locally sourced ingredients.

“We are thrilled to be opening Rita Cantina,” Eric Miller said. “We look forward to sharing our interpretation of modern Mexican cuisine with the Springs community, celebrating the fresh ingredients and local purveyors we’ve worked closely with over the years. Rita Cantina will be a place for everyone, where guests can enjoy a taco or two, or a full spread of high-end dishes and killer cocktails.”

Rita Cantina’s menu celebrates Mexican cuisine through a local lens, utilizing all the ingredients that swim, graze and grow in Gardiner’s Bay and the surrounding area. Miller’s more than three decades of fine dining experience established him as a pioneering proponent of the slow food, dock-to-dish, and farm-to-table movements and an advocate of local fishmongers, diggers, producers, and farmers. At Rita Cantina, he applies his passion for grilling and slow cooking to new flavor profiles in modern Mexican cuisine. The menu features a range of ceviches, tacos, quesadillas, slow-cooked Birria, and large plates made from fresh, locally sourced ingredients from beloved East End purveyors like Satur Farms, Multi Aquaculture System, and Gosman’s Dock, along with many independent local fishers who Chef Eric has had relationships with for over a decade.

Smaller plates include tuna ceviche tostada with avocado and charred pineapple agua chili, local littleneck clams with chorizo, serrano and Tecate, and seafood ceviche with fluke, scallop, squid, shrimp, habanero and pomegranate. Meat and fish-based tacos include Niman Ranch short ribs Birria braised in adobo sauce and consommé, and local fluke served battered with pickled cabbage slaw and crema. Large plates include Crescent Farms duck carnitas with butter lettuce wraps filled with guacamole and salsa and whole fish roasted on cedar with citrus.

From the bar, guests can enjoy a lineup of cocktails focusing on various tequilas, agaves, and mezcals. The cocktail menu is categorized by bottled, signature, frozen and margarita and Mojitos.

Rita Cantina’s bottled cocktails include timeless recipes with an updated twist, meant to stay fresh and taken to-go. Highlights from this section include the Oaxaca Old Fashioned with tequila, mezcal, agave, and orange bitters; the Mezcal Negroni with mezcal, Campari, and sweet vermouth; and the Tequila Forever Margarita with tequila, Rockey’s Agave, pepper blend, and acid.

The space at Rita Cantina was designed and built by Adam Miller, who drew inspiration from Oaxacan textiles and pottery. The indoor dining room features a bar with 10 seats in addition to 65 seats at dining tables. The interior is warm and inviting, boasting Oaxacan fabrics, brightly colored patterns and four booths. The bar and dining room lead out to a back patio with indigenous plants, Adirondack chairs and picnic tables. At the center of the outdoor patio is a bonfire where guests can enjoy s’mores and drinks after finishing their meals.

Rita Cantina also offers to-go bundles containing everything needed for a beach picnic. Signature picnic bags with margaritas, tacos and more are available, as well as “Bonfire Bags” containing Mexican chocolate, house-made graham crackers and marshmallows, and house-made drinks.

Rita Cantina is at 28 Maidstone Park Road, East Hampton. The restaurant is open for dinner Wednesday to Sunday from 4 p.m. to close, Happy Hour from 4 to 7 p.m. features $1 oysters and $10 margaritas or glass of wine. Reservations can be made at 631-329-3663 or ritacantinahamptons.com.

In East Hampton, Fresno has converted its parking area and patio into an outdoor rosé garden complete with space heaters, sanitized loaner blankets and more. The rosé garden will open for the season on Thursday, June 3, reservations are strongly recommended and can be made by calling the restaurant directly. In addition to the outdoor area, the restaurant has also installed H13 True HEPA air purifiers throughout the restaurant that filter the air in the dining room every 12 minutes.

Fresno’s menu includes starters like spicy Buffalo cauliflower, grilled prawns and salmon tartare. For entrées, choose from grilled pork porterhouse, Indian red lentil dal or roasted local tilefish.

Curbside pickup is also available and orders can be placed by calling the restaurant directly. The restaurant is currently open Thursday through Tuesday beginning at 5 p.m., and is closed on Wednesday. Nightly specials are available every day the restaurant is open.

Fresno is at 8 Fresno Place, East Hampton. For reservations call 621-324-8700 or visit fresnorestaurant.com.

On June 1, Savour, a new app that recently launched in New York City, will be available locally. With Savour, consumers can book fine dining chefs for private dinners at their own homes in t he Hamptons. Just like making a reservation at a restaurant, the app allows consumers to pick their date, their chef and their menu in just a few clicks. The roster of chefs is growing as people turn to the app to create their own private events as COVID-19 continues to bring challenges to the restaurant industry.

Current participating chefs represent a diverse selection of cuisine and approaches. Chefs that will be available to book on the East End include Francis Derby (BRG Restaurant, STARR Restaurants, Momofuku, Cannibal), Ashfer Biju (executive chef at The Pierre Hotel and specializing in Indian cuisine), and Lonnie Dyner (formerly of Bond St, River Cafe, Tavern on the Green). Savour currently operates in New York City, Miami, and Los Angeles and will expand to San Francisco this summer.

Savour was built by a team of long-standing hospitality professionals including Ronnie Madra (founder of 1OAK nightclub) and Kristel Arabian (former chef de cuisine at Michelin starred Joe’s Restaurant in Los Angeles and owner of Kitchen Culture Recruiting, a leading chef recruiting agency). Familiar with how restaurants and nightlife operate, they took their expertise to build an app with functionality and ease that simulates the joy of a dining experience out. Each chef on the app has multiple menu experiences guests can book, for various party sizes (capped at six currently because of COVID guidelines). For more information visit Savourtogether.com or download the app.

Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef and restaurateur Arie Pavlou teams up with Sag Harbor cookbook author Stacy Dermont at his Bistro Été in Water Mill on Saturday, May 29, where, from 4 to 7 p.m. patrons will receive a glass of rosé with the purchase of Dermont’s book “The Hamptons Kitchen.” Though the event is fully booked, Dermont plans to return for an additional signing event at Bistro Été on Sunday, July 11, 4 to 7 p.m.

Chef Arie, an author himself, was an advisor on the book and in it, he is credited for creating “instant mead,” and for his work on adapting Dermont’s family recipe for rabbit, a sticky-sweet, slow-roasted curried rabbit.

“The Hamptons Kitchen” was released during the height of the pandemic and quickly became the top-selling regional cookbook in the mid-Atlantic states. Featuring a foreword by world renowned food critic Gael Greene and original photos by Barbara Lassen, the book offers a guide to what’s-in-season-when and over 100 original recipes, plus it includes a host of suggested East End wine pairings.

Bistro Été is located at 760 Montauk Highway in Water Mill. “The Hamptons Kitchen” is available from area bookstores and from all major online booksellers in both print and digital formats.