Here is the season when farm stands shutter, restaurants cut their hours and it’s too cold to dip a rod (let alone a clam rake) in the water. Sure, there are woodstove-warmed holiday parties and cozy potlucks in our futures. But it’s tough to resist the urge to lie fallow. Thankfully, the East End is blessed by a crop of food entrepreneurs whose ranks swell with every passing year.

In the baking department, there are now enough sellers of sweets to sustain all your gift-giving needs, including a comedian-psychic-turned-fudgemaker and a macaroon maven turning out “tender haystacks of coconut, with browned tops and bottoms, dipped halfway in chocolate,” according to deputy editor Eileen M. Duffy. Gurney’s longtime baker is dabbling in vegan cookery and has launched a wholesale line—that you might have noticed at your local IGA, not to mention on the cover.

On the water, three oystermen are now going door-to-door with their wares, hoping to shuck at your next shindig. Farmers like Marilee Foster, who enjoyed a bumper cabbage crop (courtesy of Indian summer), are trying their hand at sauerkraut. Globetrotting chef Laurent Tourondel shows us just what can be made—from cocktails to cakes—in his petite Springs kitchen. Nearby, sculptor Hiroyuki Hamada rings in the New Year by creating a heroic amount of food—stacks of neatly packed boxes of fish cakes and stir-fried skirt steak, yams and snow peas, scallops and monkfish liver—to share with friends. And Ross School redefines the school cafeteria, dishing up more than 400 locally sourced meals a day, while teaching cultural history through cooking.

New immigrants to our food community include big city wine writers like Food & Wine’s Lettie Teague, a new Southold resident with a new appreciation for winemaking in a “marginal” climate. Long Island restaurant veteran Tom Schaudel opens an osteria and wine bar (aka pizza joint) and becomes part of the neo-pizzeria movement that includes Roberta’s in Bushwick (impeccable pizza, meats and cheeses, along with a rooftop farm, Internet radio station and all-around rocking scene) and Co. in Chelsea (where Sullivan Street baker Jim Lahey feeds us the results of his search for nirvana through minimally stretched dough).

Sometimes it’s by limiting our choices that we realize just how much we have. Wine writer Amy Zavatto supped at Roanoke Vineyards’ second installment of its Mile-Long Club. The eight-course meal featured oysters, mussels, bison, wine-braised duck and a few other items gleaned within 5,280 feet of the Riverhead winery. Not too shabby.

Brian Halweil
Editor