The Canoe Place has been the talk of the Hamptons since their reopening a couple of years ago. Their newly renovated hotel and restaurant boast luxury and fine dining. They have a main dining room, which is perfect for a more formal dining experience, but on the right side of the bar is an opening to a dark lounge area that is the perfect setting for a more laid-back cocktail and appetizer type of night.
Good Ground Tavern’s menu focuses on local and sustainable ingredients and always delivers incredible dishes. Chef Jarrod Huth spoke to Hamptons.com about his passion for cooking, his favorite dish, and what we can expect on the menu this spring and summer.
Were you always drawn to the kitchen? When did you realize this was your passion?
I’ve been working in the restaurant world since I was very young. My father was a Domino’s Pizza franchisee, so my first job was working for him. At some point, I began obsessing over pizza making. I loved the process of repetition and working with my hands What took me was the immediate feedback of how the pizza looked and tasted after it was cooked. I loved being able to refine my technique and note the tangible progress as I honed my skills. Sounds like a lot of romance for a kid in a pizza store, but I’ve always been a bit obsessive, and professional cooking is for the obsessed.
What is your favorite dish to prepare?
I really love cooking anything that involves rice. I eat it every day. It’s one of the few ingredients that has its place in almost every cuisine on the planet. Each culture has a preferred variety and method of preparation. Having said that, I make baked macaroni and cheese for my family every Christmas. It’s been a part of our tradition since I was a teenager. Every year I try and improve on the past year’s iteration, and interestingly, it gets simpler as time goes on. I’ve been shaving white truffles over it for a few years now, so maybe not too simple.
How do you stay creative and innovative in your cooking?
Creativity is a symptom of inspiration and while I’m aware it sounds cliché; I’m inspired by my colleagues and the foods in season. Most of my friends are chefs, so we constantly compare notes. When Green Asparagus comes into season in the spring we tend to agonize over where to find the best. In the late summer, we have the same conversation about tomatoes. The flavor and the look of your cuisine is dictated by the quality of your ingredients. Staying curious about new techniques and ideas in food is important, but what I appreciate more is refinement and restraint in cooking. Food can quickly become overly complicated. I’ll take pristine ingredients over creativity any day.
Talk to us about Good Ground Tavern’s Menu?
The menu at GGT is a Mediterranean twist on an American tavern. We wanted to do some elevated interpretations of classic American foods while also having some things that were slightly more adventurous on the menu. It’s a balance of food that I like to eat and food that we thought would speak to the local community. We wanted a concise menu so that we could produce all our own food instead of needing to outsource. We bake our own bread. We make our own pasta. We butcher whole fish, and we source as much as we can from the surrounding areas. The more we do in-house the more we can focus on quality.
How do sustainability and locally sourced produce affect the menu?
Whenever possible, we source ingredients locally. It helps shape your menu when you have access to beautiful ingredients, and the less time they spend in transit, the higher the quality tends to be. The fact that this has somehow become a trendy concept or catchphrase is interesting. A crucial part of being a chef is sourcing ingredients. That starts with understanding where your food comes from and developing relationships with the people who produce it.
What can we expect on the menu in the spring and summer?
Spring is my favorite season, mostly because of the beautiful vegetables that start popping up. I prefer to develop menus in the moment so I’m not sure what specific dishes will make it on to the menu yet. We will be leaning into some new versions of the pastas on the menu. We’ve been using some of our down time this winter to practice making filled pastas like ravioli and agnolotti. The local black bass, flounder and squid are also potential options. We will also be bringing back the Peconic Bay Clam Pie. We worked on it all last summer and it’s Michael Brod’s favorite.
