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You don't really want
to go all the way to Shelter Island for dinner, do you?
You'll have to go
across the North Haven bridge - if they can drop it in the water once, they can
certainly do it again - and the ferry, however charming, adds to the dinner
bill, and you can easily get lost on the way to Crescent Beach, even though it
is worth the trip.
I thought not. So
just ignore what follows about the Sunset Beach restaurant, because this is one
place I wouldn't mind keeping to myself.
There's nothing like a
trip on the ferry and across the island to unwind from Hamptons hassle. I had
been given a choice of a table at 6:30 or 8:30 on Saturday, and had opted for
the earlier time, when there were still a few swimmers breaking the smooth
waters of the bay.
The restaurant is built
on three stepped rooftops, separated from the beach only by a narrow road, and
it looks as if it has been scooped up by a tornado from the South of France or
the West Indies to find itself, rather surprised, on staid Shelter Island.
Under new ownership, it
now has tables on the ground floor and chairs scattered around on the sand for
drinks, but the main action is upstairs. The first rooftop step is an agreeable
louche bar, the next step is a dining room which is open on all sides with a
covered roof, and the last step, up among the treetops, is an open deck topped
only by strings of lanterns.
The atmosphere is
casual, the tables are covered with oilcloths printed with lurid tropical fruit,
and the attractive young waitstaff wear everything from '50s retro to what
looked like a small facecloth held on by a couple of shoelaces. Charm, pizzazz,
laid-back cool - Sunset Beach has it in spades.
It became obvious that
the 6:30/8:30 choice means that there are two sittings, one for the sunset
watchers and the later time for the see-and-be-seen crowd, but by 9 we hadn't
been given so much as a hint that we should move along.
Delighted to find
ourselves seated on the top deck, we took our hastily hand-scrawled menus,
ordered margaritas because it matched the mood, and settled back to enjoy the
scenery, expecting a long wait and food that probably wouldn't match the view.
The menu turned out to
be quite expensive. Appetizers start at $8 for a green salad and rise to $14 for
tuna tataki, entrees range from an $18 angel hair pasta Provencal to $29 for
steak frites.
One of our reviewing
team, who hadn't eaten all day and was ravenous, laid into the bread and butter.
"Hey, this is wonderful
bread. And the butter is amazing!"
And so it was - and
there's no better clue to what is to follow than the bread and butter a
restaurant chooses to serve.
So it wasn't really a
surprise when the service turned out to be both fast and charming, though we
were still a bit stunned by the quality of the food.
There was a wonderful
roughly chopped gazpacho and a dish of chilled asparagus and tiny marinated
tomatoes that was simple but perfect (though not cheap at $11).
Our favorite appetizer
was the calamari salad, with its featherlight batter, cucumber sauce, and
spaghetti-like frizz of carrot, and some delicious Pacific rim shrimp rolls with
a lively peanut dipping sauce. The tuna tataki, seared, rare, and served with a
seaweed salad and ponzu sauce, was also very good.
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Right in front of our
table an osprey dived and came up with a fish in its claws. A few minutes later
it returned and repeated the performance - it's presumably on a retainer.
Meanwhile a sudden
scudding breeze swept across the bay, breaking up the summer calm into little
teal blue ripples and ushering in an impressive black cloud stage left. The
light changed, the colors changed, and in the distance the pink sky darkened and
a rumble of thunder was heard. But by this time our faces were buried in our
entrees and not even a snowstorm would have shifted us.
As with the appetizers,
there wasn't a dud among them. Also, our hungry guest had ordered three side
dishes, so by the end of the meal we had sampled practically everything on the
menu.
Once again, attention to
detail can tell you so much about a restaurant, and those side dishes were
perfection: buttery roasted sweet corn stripped from the cob, lemon ginger
spinach, and the most perfect jade green asparagus.
The moules frites ($22)
are really great here; lots of places have good mussels but Sunset Beach's fries
are arguably the best on the East End. A marinated ahi tuna ($26), served with
asparagus and the most delicious jasmine rice, came in neck and neck with the
wild striped bass ($24) - its skin seared golden, its delicate ichor trapped
inside - which had an interesting lemon chili sauce.
Equally good were the
fat brown-ed sea scallops on their bed of corn and fava beans, though the
winner, by a nose, was the superlative soft-shelled crab, which was so light, so
crisp, so. . . ("Anyone in the newsroom fancy a lunch run to Shelter Island?")
The black cloud, having
given us just a frisson of concern, passed to our right and, exactly on time, a
mauve sun broke through the clouds, picked up some strength, turned the whole
sky the color of strawberry jam, and went down in a blaze of hot red glory. The
intense pressure of the colors on the retina were as pleasurable as the intense
flavors on the palate.
A couple of desserts
with enough spoons for everyone is usual reviewing protocol, but this wouldn't
do for Miss Extremely Hungry, who insisted on a strawberry shortcake all to
herself, so in the end - a blessed decision - we ordered four desserts.
Maybe that rumble of
thunder, that sudden darkness and rushing wind, marked the passage through the
sky of the great pastry god Caloricus, because the desserts at Sunset Beach are
out of this world.
There was a hot
chocolate gateau that had the lightness of a souffle; a sticky, caramelized
pineapple tarte Tatin; a creme brulée of silky perfection and delicate crust,
and a shortcake that was buttery soft inside but had a biscuity crunch outside.
Just as we had finished
moaning and groaning with pleasure over the last crumbs, a warm rain started and
our waitress obligingly found us a table under cover where we could have coffee.
There are restaurants
with good food and restaurants with good views and outdoor dining; you can find
funky charm and good service, pleasant music and attractive bars, but you seldom
find them all in one package. We discovered that the pastry chef, Lisa Murphy,
and the chef, Terry Harwood, both of whom came recently from Los Angeles to run
Sunset Beach, got married about a month ago. Maybe love has something to do with
it.
Sunset Beach won't
appeal to those who like their waiters and tablecloths starched, but for the
rest of us, believe me, dining on the East End doesn't get much better than
this.
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