Long Island Restaurants

The North Fork Table & Inn

Mike and Mary Mraz, left, with Gerard Hayden and Claudia Fleming at North Fork Table & Inn. (NEWSDAY / BILL DAVIS)

Long Island wine country's latest sparkler is a restaurant.

The North Fork Table & Inn opens as a destination for excellent new American cuisine, meticulously prepared and graciously served.

Gerard Hayden and Claudia Fleming, a couple of culinary stars in New York kitchens and in real life, emphasize local ingredients, as others have done, but present them like no one else.

Hayden, a veteran of Aureole and, years ago, The River Cafe and East Hampton Point; and Fleming, once celebrated pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern, have fashioned a handsome, mannerly, summer portrait in oyster gray and white -- a hint of New England by way of the East Side and East End.

Their enterprise, a partnership with Mary and Mike Mraz, she of Gramercy Tavern and he of Hearth in Manhattan, succeeds Coeur des Vignes at this address. The transformation is stunning.

Refreshed and reborn, the vintage restaurant and hostelry would be delightful anywhere. But it's magnetic so near the vineyards, and underscores the changes and improvements in dining out between Riverhead and Orient.

Choices are limited to four or five in each category on the fine-tuned menu. Springtime visitors may find a smooth, terrific potato-and-leek soup floating nuggets of smoked bacon and a cloudlet of foamy sour cream. Or enjoy an artful salad of beets in three hues, accented with tangy Catapano Dairy Farm goat cheese.

Four sushi-style strips of fluke, marinated with red grapefruit, go east-west with crisp ginger, extra-virgin olive oil and crunchy Hawaiian sea salt. Mellow asparagus risotto sports sweet pea greens and garlic chives. Delectable Oregon morels and snow peas complement a course of crisp soft-shell crab.

Butter-poached lobster, a dish immortalized at the nation's greatest wine-country restaurant, The French Laundry in Napa's Yountville, instantly becomes a Long Island classic. Here, the lush, shelled lobster is richness defined, in a sweet carrot and ginger sauce, with sauteed sugar snap peas.

Fennel-dusted monkfish in tomato-fennel broth; and black sea bass in lemon-mussel broth, are light, aromatic, very good. Juicy Berkshire pork tenderloin shares its plate with a square of cumin-seasoned bacon for double impact. Pink rack of lamb rests on luscious sliced potatoes and melted leeks. Savory, smoked pepper-crushed potatoes boost garlic-infused chicken. And there's a respectable list of Long Island wines by the glass for pairings.

An upside-down peach cobbler, both homey and sophisticated, comes with cream-cheese ice cream. Perfect strawberry sorbet and a strawberry-rhubarb compote accompany the silky buttermilk panna cotta. Passionfruit and coconut sorbets sandwiched between coconut wafers float amid coconut tapioca. The sleek chocolate-caramel tart, with caramel ice cream, while commendable, ranks fourth.

On the North Fork, this table is first.

Reviewed by Peter M. Gianotti, 6/11/06.

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