After a successful summer, Southampton-based Madeline Picnic Co. is ready for the holiday season, providing everything but the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.
“Making cranberry sauces and chutneys is great but laborious,” says Madeline McLean, founder and owner of the gourmet picnic business. “It is geared towards people who love to cook and want to do dinner.”
With a focus on seasonal food, most of her ingredients are sourced locally from Balsam Farms, Quail Hill and Amber Waves. McLean says, “We base everything off what we can get at the farms.”
Her sides, salads and sauces offer a fresh take on original Thanksgiving dishes. Think herb and parmesan crusted roasted winter squash or an autumn rice pilaf with squash, carrots, celery, apples and caramelized onions. The menu also features a few unconventional salads like the chicory and grilled pear salad with gorgonzola. But the sauces are perhaps the most inventive, ranging from a vegetarian gravy to a house-made harissa. (See full menu here.)
Using the South Fork’s bounty as inspiration, McLean aimed to create “bright, flavorful” food. In the past, McLean has worked with clients, customizing sides and salads to be gluten- or dairy-free, depending on their dietary restrictions.
For the holiday, Madeline Picnic Co. will also be retailing Carissa’s Breads, whose baked goods are almost wholly derived from the East End foodshed. In addition to loaves of her signature sourdough country boule or farm wheat, Carissa is offering a concord grape pie comprised of foraged grapes from the North Fork and a salted caramel apple pie with a wheat crust. Perhaps most enticing to carnivores is a bacon lattice apple pie made with Mecox Bay Dairy Farm thick cut bacon. Who says bacon can’t go in everything?
Happy to be a partner with Carissa’s Breads, McLean says that, “everyone wants their pies and their fresh loaves of bread.”
All sides are à la carte and are $70–$100 each for four to six people, and $120–$175 for seven to 10 people. Sauces range from $10–$18, depending on the number in the party. Pies range from $30–$50 and specialty breads $7–$11.
E-mail orders to hello@madelinepicnic.co, call  631.353.8923.
Deadline is Friday, Nov. 20. at 11 a.m.
