Dining
A new Italian fine dining restaurant is opening Wednesday, June 24, at The Charlotte Inn on Summer street in Edgartown. Owner and chef A.J. Black promises to infuse flavorful Italian herbs and spices, quality truffle oils and Barolo wines into homemade pasta and entrées of fresh seafood, whole fishes, aged beef, veal and lamb, free-range poultry and risottos.
His passion is to prepare uniquely rustic and classically refined dishes like filetto al pepe verde, duck fantasia, the chef said in a statement, with fresh lobster and fish specials prepared daily.
On steamy summer afternoons, the aroma of chocolate fudge, peanut butter fudge or maybe caramel-smothered cashew brittle mingles in the seaside air in downtown Edgartown. It seeps out of 21 North Water street to sweeten the stale sidewalk air cocooning the VTA bus drop-off two blocks westward.
Sunday is Father’s Day, and chances are you will be taking Dad out to dinner (after all, didn’t you take Mom out on Mother’s Day?)
To that end, the backers of the inaugural Martha’s Vineyard Restaurant Week hope they are onto something, because Sunday is the kickoff night for a weeklong event designed to attract hungry diners with interesting menus at reasonable prices.
There is a kinetic movement to the Taste of the Vineyard, the annual feast and fund-raiser for the Martha’s Vineyard Preservation Trust. It’s the giddy energy of hundreds of people who skipped lunch, and maybe breakfast, playing gourmand for the night. Sampling. Sipping. Spying what’s ahead. Suddenly it’s forget the forks; it’s just finger food, faster and faster, with less and less room in the belly, until finally, barely two hours after the tent doors opened, there’s no right move but to dance.
Who Calls It Lazy Man’s Lobster?
Not the folks who prepare the lobster rolls every summer Friday night for the Grace Church sale in Vineyard Haven, otherwise known as the best dinner deal (and worst weekly parking and traffic snag) on the Island. They work hard for your money.
You might say that the restaurant business is in their blood. Perhaps success is a family trait, passed down through the generations by the grandfather who opened the Vineyard institution where they now spend all of their summer hours. Whatever the reason, as the Vineyard approaches an uncertain summer season, brothers Wilfred (Buster) Jr. and Richard (Richie) Giordano radiate carefree confidence that can come only from a combination of instinct and experience.