Aug 28, 2008
| Search | NASSAU: North Shore | South Shore | SUFFOLK: North Shore | South Shore | Hamptons | North Fork | Pine Barrens | Weather |
Aug 28, 2008 |
| ||||||
| |||||||
The new restaurant at the Inn at Quogue brings the 18th century place into the 21st, with sharp decor and an ambitious menu.
It's an eye-catching ride, but not always a smooth one. The dining room looks terrific, as does the food. Service is all right, too. But a meal can be uneven, usually peaking at good.
The Inn had kept a very traditional, pristinely white appearance suitable for blazers and pearls during recent occupations by mainly American eateries.
Chef-owners Frank Tramontano and Mary Spellman, and restaurateur Sean Kehlenbeck, go for a glitzier approach, from the near-gilded earthtones to the partly mirrored columns. Custom-made, cloth lobster bibs carry a comparatively discreet signature "Q."
Diners receive business-card size magnifiers with their checks. But the size of the tab could immediately refocus anyone with presbyopia.
You do get respectable portions and some imagination for the cost. The dewy $24 combo of jumbo shrimp and crabmeat comes with cocktail, remoulade and mignonette sauces. Tender and crisp calamari benefit from roasted poblano chile dip at half the price.
But the $18, pan-seared Maryland lump crabcakes are pretty bready. "Grilled pesto Gulf shrimp prosciutto wrapped" translates into $22 worth of dryness. The $14 duck-and-fig wontons have very little fruit and show up pasty. Wild mushroom ravioli materialize in a $17 production akin to cream-of-mushroom soup.
The meal improves with a refreshing salad of frisée, apples, walnuts, grapes and Maytag blue cheese. Likewise, mesclun with baked goat cheese, roasted figs and pear; and heirloom tomatoes with fresh mozzarella, red onion and bibb lettuce.
"Velvet" lobster bisque is more like rayon, but offered with a glass of sherry on the side. Onion soup under a lid of Gruyere is standard.
Q's best is an excellent, grilled Copper Ridge sirloin steak, sauced au poivre or bearnaise. It has fine beefy flavor and arrived precisely as ordered. Have yours with the savory Gorgonzola-and-chive mashed potatoes. Avoid the chewy, hot-pink pork chop.
And try the steamed lobster, rich and buttery, protecting yourself with that big-as-a-breastplate bib. The well-dressed seafood grill salad, with colossal shrimp, sea scallops and inch-thick tuna mini-steaks amid the greens, could feed two.
Snowy, baked sea bass filet finished with pineapple, basil and chile, keeps the heat in check. Tuna, however, is overwhelmed by an aggressive variation on the puttanesca theme, this one rife with rosemary.
Skip the pasty whole-wheat penne with acidic artichokes in favor of the linguine with baby clams au vermouth. A satisfying side dish of three-cheese macaroni leads them both.
Mellow, apple-raisin-croissant bread pudding and Madeira-and-Port baked peaches and plums are pleasing finales. But the refrigerator-cold "gateau de crepe," a 20-layer construct, needs work. You'll also question the overdone vanilla black-and-jasmine rice pudding with toasted coconut.
Tangy sorbets, however, provide a summery answer.
Hours: Dinner every day, from 6 p.m. Reservations recommended weekends.