Right On Que

In the thick of summer (or, more aptly, in the thick of the post-Memorial Day traffic), Greenport can feel worlds away from the South Fork. I don’t mean to dissuade all of my fellow South Forkers from heading north for the fine dining options that abound, but I get how it is. Look down Route 27 at the line of cars, and you might feel inclined to turn back around and stay home.

But why deny yourself the innumerable pleasures of the North Fork’s culinary offerings if, say, there is a better way of bringing them to you? In Greenport, Green Hill Kitchen & Que is now offering (drum roll, please) same-day delivery to the Hamptons, just as long as you’re mindful enough to place your order before 2 PM. That means that you can enjoy the smoky, award-wining barbecue stylings of chef and pitmaster Matty Boudreau without the traffic.

In the barbecue department, you can enjoy a plethora of offerings: smoked prime brisket, beer can chicken with mustard barbecue sauce, pulled pork, smoked turkey breast turned into a sandwich and served on a pretzel bun, blackened Scottish salmon, smoked jackfruit, and hot and sweet wings with blue cheese and celery. Meals are also available. The Hungry Man feeds one to two people, while the BBQ XXL feeds three to four. The piece de resistance, Da Pit Crew, is enough for seven to eight. All the meals come with a selection of sides.

Speaking of sides, Green Hill offers fries, cheddar grits, collard greens, creamy slaw, barbecue beans, yellow rice, garlicky broccoli, and beans and rice. There are also quarantine kits available, enough for either two or four people, three proteins and four sides. For dessert, indulge in a giant brownie, a “burnt” cheesecake, or a pint of ice cream (there are seven different flavors available).

There are other non-barbecue items available, too, like a stellar lobster roll, a smash burger, cauliflower nuggets served with ranch, grilled garlic shrimp, and local calamari. And each day of the week has its own rotating special, which is featured online. In the true spirit of barbecue, you can get five-serving to-go order of chef Boudreau’s blood orange margarita.

Daily delivery takes place from noon to 6 PM, so you can plan your meal for either lunch or dinner — an effortless family day around the pool, or a casual dinner to cap off a summer afternoon. Green Hill is open seven days a week, so there’s no end to how much barbecue you can have delivered. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,” to quote a most famous playwright. He was not talking about pulled pork and beer can chicken, maybe, but had he known of the possibilities of the 21st Century, perhaps Shakespeare would have seen Macbeth’s tragedy as one of too little smoked meat. The point is that you can get your barbecue delivered today — but also tomorrow, and tomorrow, and also the tomorrow after that. It’s the Greenport-to-Hamptons gift that keeps on giving, summer traffic or not.

Actually, I think I quite prefer the idea of smoked meat arriving in my own pool-bedecked backyard, hassle-free, on a hot June afternoon, to the idea of traveling to eat. It appeals to my inner homebody. Why change out of my bathing suit when I can laze about in the sun, chicken wings in one hand, blood orange margarita in the other? There are no dishes to attend to, no drinks to refill. The labor, you see, has been completed by someone else, all of it, even the driving. I’ll take that order to go, if you don’t mind.