While surfing the net looking for a place to stay in Montauk, I stumbled onRuschmeyer’s and discovered to my delight that our very own Greg McCarty of the Beach Street Sandwich Truck had landed here as executive chef. Those sandwiches were ridiculous (read about them here) but I knew Chef Greg, with his illustrious background (including stints at Nobu and Jean George), had more up his sleeve. His menu is at once playful and genius.

We started with tiny ears of baby corn, roasted in the skin and marveled that these crunchy morsels had been relegated to bad Chinese takeout. Greg has mastered umame: my salad of grilled peaches, arugula, procsciutto and teeny lumps of melting taleggio was sweet, salty, spicy, creamy; followed by the best buttery, briny, yeasty, blistered clam pizza I’ve ever had. Even the parsley had flavor. My fearless husband ordered the whole porgy, which is best left to a pathologist to disect. Dinner was worth the trip.