Vacation Lunch:Townline BBQ and Levain Bakery, Sagaponack & Wainscott,NY

To me vacation is all about lunch. Most of my non-vacation lunches are had sitting at a desk shoving some kind of salad down my throat while on a conference call - on mute, of course. So when JB suggested a lunch at Townline BBQ, I was in.

Townline BBQ is a roadhouse of sorts, albeit a Hamptons roadhouse, with counter service and awesome BBQ. Technically, it is in the village of Sagaponack - between East Hampton and Bridgehampton - and at 12:30 on a hot summer Wednesday, it was packed. So packed, in fact, that we had to wait 10 minutes for a parking spot. Like I said, it is a Hamptons roadhouse.

The inside is super casual with a long communal picnic table down the middle and more individual tables down the sides. The "No kids allowed" bar has flat screen TVs, a dart board and a pool table, but we'd have to save that for another day. (Actually, we've had pretty amazing winter bar specials here in the past like $1 sliders and .25 cent wings. I hope they have them again this winter.) JB ordered while I secured a table for the 4 of us. He came back with an abundance of meat:
- 1 order of burnt ends
- 1 order of short ribs
- 1 order of brisket
- 1 order of fries

The burnt ends are typically my favorite. I'm a sucker for anything burnt. Strange, I know. While these were burnt, they were a bit too saucy on this visit. I like burnt and dry, perhaps in homage to my mom's cooking. (Sorry, Mom!) The brisket was dry and good, but ordinary when compared to the short ribs. I later learned that JB had recieved a reccomendation from the Pitmaster. They were perfect and huge. The closer to the rub, the better it tasted. I hope that JB can recreate this at home. Fries looked good, little D liked them the best. I did not partake.

Because we hadn't eaten enough, we had to stop at Levain Bakery down the road in Wainscott for their famous chocolate chip walnut cookie. They call it a cookie, but at $4 this "cookie" is like a blondie and cookie combined into one. It is massive and when you bite into it, it is still soft on the inside with the walnuts giving it the perfect amount of crunch. It must be 1,000 calories, so I'm proud to say that we didn't finish it in one sitting, but I wanted to. FYI, Levain in Wainscott is only open in high season, but you can indulge each and every day at one of their two locations in NYC, either on the Upper West Side or in Harlem.

And with that I made a promise to myself to be back to salads for lunch - after vacation.

Until our next Berger,
KLB

Townline BBQ

3593 Montauk Highway
Sagaponack, NY 11962
631.537.2271
www.townlinebbq.com

Post-season be sure to check their hours/days of operation and those winter bar specials.

Levain Bakery
354 Montauk Highway
Wainscott, NY 11975
631.537.8570
www.levainbakery.com

See their website for other locations.