Crustaceans, Chowder At The Ready

Season may not be in full swing yet, but Bostwick’s is up and running with all your favorite crustaceans at the ready. The venerable chowder house has opened its doors for takeout from Thursday through Sunday, noon to 8 PM.

The spring menu includes many Bostwick’s fan favorites, including baked stuffed clams, coconut shrimp spring rolls with a sweet chili dipping sauce, and a raw bar sampler of oysters, clams, and shrimp cocktail. Corn chowder and lobster bisque are available, as are the restaurant’s famous chowders, served either Manhattan-style, with a tomato base, or New England-style.

Entrees include a well-rounded roster of seafood options. Choose from sautéed crab cakes with remoulade, vegetables, and rice or potato, or fish and chips with tartar sauce, or blackened fish tacos made with Cajun-spiced mahi-mahi and a fresh mango salsa. There is also a seafood pasta, made with lobster, shrimp, scallops, penne, and a cream sauce full of sundried tomatoes.

Tuna poké tacos come with soy- and sesame-marinated tuna, a sauce made with wasabi and cucumber, and a mango salsa. And the famous lobster roll, bursting from the warm bun, comes with a choice of coleslaw, fries, chips, or potato salad. There is nothing as summer perfect, as indulgent, as completely worthy of the cost, as the heavy-in-the-hand lobster roll.

Bostwick’s claim to fame — well, one of them, anyway — was its sprawling outdoor seating. You could dive into that lobster roll in the deep, warm spring sunshine, sweet meat greeting your own happy maw. It was inviting, and it was good.

Here’s one way to make a smile out of the decided frown of the world of Takeout 2020: Take your lobster roll to where it should be eaten in the first place. The water, after all, is just down the road.

Bostwick’s sibling restaurant, Bostwick’s on the Harbor, has not yet announced when it will reopen for the season, or what its schedule or operating situation may be. Still, that second spot occupies enviable real estate on Gann Road, which is also where the East Hampton Town boat ramp is. You can drive down to the parking lot and swing your feet off of the edge and pretend that you’re the only person in the world. Sometimes it feels that way, anyway. There, with a lobster roll in hand, it’s summer, no matter where you happen to be, or what you happen to be feeling.

In an uncertain moment, time still passes, spring into summer, summer into fall. There are small victories in all of this, and some of them are very simple. Some of them require no more of us than picking up a lobster roll that’s just as good as it was last year (and the year before that, and the year before that, really), and taking it down to the water, where we can be reminded that, one day, things will all be back to normal again.

That’s one good part of all of this. The weather is getting better. Takeout need not be confined to our kitchen tables any longer. There may not be restaurants, per se, but there can be makeshift dining experiences, dinners in our backyards, lunches near the water. There can be lobster rolls. Lobster rolls! We’re probably going to be okay.

Orders can be placed by calling the restaurant directly at 631-324-1111. Credit card payments will be accepted over the phone.