Dining
Accusing West Tisbury businessman Paul Garcia of bolting on a $10,000 debt and dissolving his corporation to avoid paying it, the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) came out swinging this week in the dispute that erupted when the deli still popularly called Back Alley’s closed abruptly at the start of this month.
When he shuttered Garcia’s Deli and Bakery after more than seven years, Mr. Garcia blamed his landlords, the tribe, for raising his rent, calling them incompetent and dysfunctional.
Garcia’s Deli & Bakery, the take-out eatery behind Alley’s General Store in central West Tisbury, hung out “everything must go” signs last weekend and closed its doors Monday afternoon, not for the season but for good.
“I went swimming this morning,” announced Chef Stefan Richter to a rapt audience at a cooking demonstration at the Boathouse in Edgartown on Saturday. “I swam across the harbor. I came back and my toes were blue. No wet suit. It took me about 35 minutes to defrost, it was brutal.”
Culinary Workshops
By Tuesday, August 25, Susan and Pierre Guérin, owners of the Sweet LifeCafé, had pretty much given up hope that the President would make a return visit to their Oak Bluffs eatery. President and Mrs. Obama had come for a meal in 2007 during the presidential campaign, sharing a quiet dinner on the breezy restaurant sunporch. The then-sena tor and his wife posed for a photo with theGuérins, which is now framed along with a note of gratitude scrawled on Sweet Life stationary by Mr. Obama.
Chris Fischer’s well-worn Ford pickup is a familiar sight on the winding roads up-Island. Its rusted bed is piled with vegetable peelings; turnip greens, muddied onion skins, brilliant green bean shells are scattered among gardening tools and a hodgepodge of things farm-related. It is an early Saturday morning and Mr. Fischer, a private chef and Island native, is driving between the farm stands, refrigerators and gardens of Chilmark in search of ingredients for lunch.