Josh Wesson’s Long Island Wine pairing at Jedediah Hawkins by Eileen M. Duffy

I’ve been to a few wine dinners. They’re mostly always fun. The system usually breaks down by the second course when the room starts to get loud after the wine’s been flowing. Last week, however, I attended a dinner with Josh Wesson at Jedediah Hawkins. It was the first of a series, Sessions in the Speakeasy, and it focused on wine and food pairing using exclusively Long Island wine. Wesson is best known for having started Best Cellars, a retail shop that organized wine by style rather than by region. He now writes book and does talks and things like wine dinners, and he’s really funny and entertaining; he kept everyone involved until the Martha Clara Clusters was poured with the chocolate cake. There was one line about a wine being not Chateau Lafite but Chateau Your Feet. He’s been a big supporter of Long Island wine, having emceed this year’s HARVEST East End. And he said something that I think a lot of people forget: “It’s not often you get to see a new wine region, and one so close to home.” Let upisland have their breweries, we’ve got wine, baby!

He started out telling everyone that he wasn’t going to tell us something that we didn’t already know, because we all know what we like, and every wine gets a thumbs up, a thumbs sideways or a thumbs down. On to the pairings:
The first course was to show that you don’t always have to drink the wine you cooked with. The sauce for scallops was made with the Sherwood House chardonnay, but just as many people liked the chenin pairing.

The second course was to show that still and sparkling wines can be paired with salads, vinegar be damned.

The third course was the lesson on red wine with fish. Again, just as many people liked the McCall pinot with the salmon as liked the Paumanok chardonnay.

The fourth course (not pictured above) of short ribs was served with the Lenz 2008 Gewürztraminer, a white wine, and the 2009 Roanoke Cabernet Sauvignon, which was drinking quite well, by the way. The lesson was white wine with meat; again, it was half and half, with the gewürz getting as many votes as the cab.

The final course was chocolate cake: one made with 62 percent cocoa, the other with 87 percent cocoa, paired with Jamesport’s 2007 Syrah Sidor Reserve, a dry wine, and theMartha Clara Clusters, a sweet fortified wine. This was to show that pairing sweet with sweet is a much better match.

Wesson’s theory and wit are present in the book that came with the evening:Williams-Sonoma-Wine-Food-Look-Flavor

Jedediah Hawkins Inn is very pleased to be selected to be part of Great Small Hotels, “a unique collection of small luxury hand picked hotels”.

For anyone who lives in New York, the excitement of the city’s famed crush of humanity occasionally feels simply crushing. No matter how much you love it, every so often you’ve just got to leave. Here, to keep the old damp, drizzly November from permanently chilling the soul, we present four plans for a weekend escape, each within a few hours’ drive from the city.

Jedediah Hawkins Inn
Jamesport, New York — With its country roads dotted with farm stands, its burgeoning vineyards and casually sophisticated food scene, the North Fork is a quieter, gentler side of Long Island — closer than the Hamptons to the rural idyll that has drawn urbanites to the East End for generations. And the Jedediah Hawkins, a six-room Victorian inn whose every last nook is as cozy as can be, sets just the right mood for a low-key escape from the city. While summer and fall bring the most visitors, the colder months have an unexpected charm of their own. A blustery day is all the more excuse to pile into that billowing white duvet and keep the fireplace blazing in the room — at least until the scent of fresh-baked bread wafting in from the dining room becomes too much to resist. Beyond the hotel’s own excellent farm-to-table restaurant and intimate little speakeasy, the North Fork’s many outstanding places to eat take on somewhat more of a small-town, locals-oriented feel in the off-season. The wineries, meanwhile, shift their focus from the vineyards to the cellars and tasting rooms, often hosting free tastings, holiday open houses, seasonal dinners and live music.
Getting there: Jedediah Hawkins is located 85 miles (about a 2-hour drive) from New York City.

Read more
http://magazine.tablethotels.com/en/2013/11/escape-from-new-york/

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By Amanda Festa

A Photorealistic Look at the North Fork – Literary Traveler Talks to Artist Charles Wildbank

I am hesitant to write too enthusiastically about the North Fork of Long Island. Not because I didn’t enjoy my time there, but because I loved the area’s laid-back, natural charm so much that I don’t know if I should share it with too many people. Part of what makes the vicinity so special is its undiscovered appeal, as though when you travel there you are stumbling upon an untouched hideaway of farm-to-table restaurants, lush local vineyards and an emerging art scene to rival any of the more populated areas like the neighboring South Fork, perhaps better known as the Hamptons.
A quaint, multi-faceted destination full of fresh, flavorful food, an impressive selection of local wine and a budding cultural hub to boot? It sounds too good to be true. But Literary Traveler saw it with our own eyes, and we brought cameras to document it. But if you don’t want to take our word for it, your best bet is to see it for yourself.

The Long Way Home – Literary Traveler Talk Ghosts, Family and Career with Jedediah’s New Chef

FOOD, WINE, & DINING, ARTS & CULTURE, TRAVEL & LOCAL ATTRACTIONS

By Literary Traveler Published: August 13 2013

Taking a break from the glitter of the gold coast, the girls of Literary Traveler – a travel website dedicated to literature – were intrigued ..

The Long Way Home – Literary Traveler Talk Ghosts, Family and Career with Jedediah’s New Chef

This is the first installment from the Literary Traveler’s Guest Posts on LongIsland.com, exploring the local attractions, and history here on Long Island. With the recent pique in interest in the Great Gatsby following this year’s movie release, The Literary Travelers have decided to head to Long Island, and see how our culture is still inspired by Gatsby today.
Not many people are aware that The Great Gatsby is not just the great American novel, but a road safety handbook in disguise. Taking F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lead from how NOT to conduct a road-trip, Literary Traveler headed away from the city, and aimed for the relaxed countryside of the North Fork in search of what Long Island has to offer tourists today. The readers of our website want to stay somewhere that’s more than just a jumping off point, so the Jedediah Hawkins Inn, with its gables, herb garden and speakeasy seemed ideal.

Meeting the restaurant’s new chef Richard Kanowski, we didn’t expect to hear a personal story of a Long Islander who had returned with a young family to nurture a career in a kitchen that has been frequented by a lineage of celebrity chefs. And that it would all come wrapped in an upbeat ghost story.
“This place has been riddled with big name celebrity chefs…but it stands on its own” says Kanowski.
Up until recently, Kanowski was a stay-at-home Dad working on his own private catering business, which he ran with his wife.
His policy in the kitchen seems to reflect that: “I make it very clear that it’s like a family. It’s a good coaching lesson…it’s a good opportunity to show how it’s done”, he says.
The road to Jedediah began with a childhood in Winter Place on Long Island, a stint in Boston at the Ritz Carlton and in Carnegie Hall as executive sous chef, and extensive travel around the country (Kanowski is a snowboarder who has travelled in 47 states), before he ended up back on Long Island to raise a family and develop his career in the locavore heartland of the region.
To give a sense of the opportunity that Jedediah represents to him, he tells us that after only 4 hours on the new job, his wife called him to say that Newsday was on the phone wanting to confirm that he was the new chef at Jedediah’s.
But despite demanding longer hours, this career leap has landed Kanowski in a place where the pace of life is slower and gentler than the city’s bustle. In Manhattan he says, it was “another life.” There, he catered large parties for people with butler kitchens. Here, he says, “the asparagus is still warm from the sun.”
“When I drive to work I pass the farms and see what they have…” “Harps’ farms just got corn”, he says. The menu at Jedediah is changed roughly every 2-3 weeks to keep pace with the veg that is coming into season.
Kanowski explains that for him, the more difficult philosophy, but ultimately the most rewarding one is to remain calm in the kitchen. That way, staff are not afraid to speak up when they see a detail that isn’t quite right. But it’s not easy.
“It’s a conscious choice”, he admits; “you’re dealing with knives, you’re dealing with fire, you’re dealing with people yelling at you…”
It does help, however, when dealing with knives, pressure and extreme heat actually brings out the zen Buddhist in you.
“An order comes in and I’m not thinking about anything… it’s just reaction… I love it” he says of his job.
“Sometimes you feel like you’re going underwater but there’s always a way out of it”, he adds.
And though he hints that he hasn’t always been this way in pressured situations – “I worked at La Plage…I was 24”, it seems that overall, his unique work experience has honed the diplomat in him rather than the stereotypical tyrannical chef.
“I was the executive sous chef at Carnegie Hall”, he explains. “I had to deal with a HR department and learn what’s appropriate and not appropriate.”
And, in a twist worthy of our quirky accommodation, Kanowski is as adept at dealing with ghosts as he is at dealing with HR departments.
We’re talking in the rustic lamplit speakeasy when he warns us, “be careful when you’re taking pictures down here” To illustrate, he shows us his own photos with beautiful white rings on the shot that seem to have come from nowhere.
“We think it’s a girl… “ he says; “she likes good people who work hard at their jobs.”
Kanowski modestly suggests that the ghost was receptive to his diplomatic nature.
“We had a conversation one night”, he says, “We came to an agreement.”
That is one ghost story that I could well believe.

This Week’s Dan’s Papers Cover Artist: Charles Wildbank

DAN’S PAPERS JUNE 28, 2013 COVER, ART BY CHARLES WILDBANK
JUNE 29, 2013 BY MARION WOLBERG WEISS

It’s hard to completely characterize this week’s cover artist, Charles Wildbank. A look at his still lifes, fruit (like the cover image of strawberries) and portraits shows a predisposition for Photorealism. His flowers, including poppies and sunflowers, are luscious and so real, we can smell them as if they were in the same room with us. His portraits, often of children, are just as present; we can almost imagine what they are thinking, like the red-headed young boy and the child on the beach. Close-up and a realistic style help us to experience Wildbank’s paintings, but then there’s a surprise, like the double image of a clown, more surreal than anything else. We sense this character’s existence, too. We still see him in our mind’s eye, long after his image is no longer before us.

This Weeks Dan’s Papers Cover Artist: Charles Wildbank

to read

Jedediah Hawkins Inn, Jamesport

The North Fork of Long Island has a reputation for good food and fine wine. Set apart from the crowds of the Hamptons, amid fragrant gardens and farmland, the Jedediah Hawkins Inn aptly reflects the area’s charms. It has one suite and five guest rooms that range from nautical to homely. But the real draw here is in the free wine tastings at 14 nearby vineyards and the celebrated farm-to-fork restaurant by executive chef Lia Fallon.

Jedediah Hawkins Inn, 400 South Jamesport Avenue, Jamesport (001 631 722 2900; jedediahhawkinsinn.com). Doubles start at $279 (£186), B&B.

http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/the-big-six-long-island-lodges-8668116.html?action=gallery&ino=5

Groomsmen eating on the patio in their tuxes; photo Randee Daddona

Photos Randee Daddona

The first star of the new season is an old favorite.
Chef Lia Fallon continues the remarkable revival of the Jedediah Hawkins Inn with a delightful, distinctive restaurant.
Fallon, who earned high ratings for Amarelle, the former New American spot in Wading River, is even better here, brightening spring and summer with food of the moment and the East End.
She closed Amarelle earlier this year. Fallon was seriously injured in a car accident in September. But she has come back reinvigorated, making Jedediah Hawkins a destination once more.
The Inn, which opened in 2006, remains one of the handsomest places to eat on Long Island, a reborn Italianate-Victorian beauty that dates to 1863. The charming dining rooms evoke the past in their design and the present in their artwork.
And Fallon’s fare lets you know the time of year as readily as the calendar, the location as clearly as a GPS.
She welcomed spring with delicious diver sea scallops on creamed ramps; jumbo shrimp and pea risotto; addictive asparagus-ricotta-and olive flatbread; and a still life of just-harvested vegetables, spring onion to ramps and more perfect peas.
On the cusp of summer, the chef sends out flawlessly fried soft-shell crab with avocado mousse, a refined lemon parfait with strawberry-rhubarb compote, ripe berries in a buttery buckle or crumble.
Year-round, Fallon should continue making sweet lobster-and-shrimp fritters with green Tabasco aioli; duck spring rolls with cabbage-and-pineapple slaw and a dollop of spicy apricot puree; littlenecks stuffed with bread crumbs, bacon and Parmesan; and the subtly hot pulled-pork flatbread.
You may enjoy much of the menu as a series of small plates, or take a more traditional appetizer-main course route. The advice is to taste as many dishes as you can. Fallon extracts the most from every ingredient, concentrating the flavor and spurring your appetite.
An asparagus flan, tomatoes and tarragon butter accent the lush, rare cuts of ahi tuna; coconut-cilantro couscous and harissa-lime beurre blanc did the same for cod. Tomato-bourbon baked beans and skillet cornbread support a rack of slightly chewy baby back ribs. Seared figs, red wine and quinoa spur the tender, sliced duck breast.
The chocolate marquise is an all-seasons winner, with pistachio ice cream. Vanilla ice cream complements the apricot spin on tarte Tatin. Ricotta mousse blooms in a flower like quartered fig, a brush stroke of balsamic glaze away from a fresh fig lacquered with the sweet-tart vinegar.
And it’s only June.