It’s no secret the North Fork has some amazing restaurants. So when celebrities and national shows recognize that, we celebrate.
Season four of Alex Guarnaschelli’s Food Network show “Fix Me A Plate” just dropped on the network’s app. Each short episode features a restaurant on Long Island, with two of them being the North Fork’s very own Lucharitos and Ellen’s on Front, both in Greenport.
Each episode, about four to six minutes in length, dives into the dishes most known at each restaurant. At the Center Moriches Lucharitos location, Guarnaschelli, a judge on Chopped and Iron Chef, makes a quesadilla in their wood fired oven with sausage and peppers, poking fun at their fancy set-up.
“That’s pretty fancy for a quesadilla,” she said, referring to the wood-fired oven and farm-to-table vegetables that come from the farm on site. She quickly, however, eats her words, quite literally.
“Do you hear that noise?” she says at one point, referring to the crunch of the tortilla. “Look at how beautiful that is.”
She also speaks with Marc LaMaina and Kevin Sage, childhood friends who own the place, about their friendship and running a business together.
“We’re those guys that sit up at night thinking of ideas,” Sage said. “We make fun of each other nonstop.”
“I think they call that best friends,” LaMaina responds.
Guarnaschelli appreciated that connection.
“People running a business, when they love each other like this, it totally affects the taste of the food,” she said.
At Ellen’s on Front, Guarnaschelli tries the glorious duck fried rice and gets all the secrets to the fried crispy quinoa salad from chef and co-owner Jennie Werts. She described how she makes it — overcooked slightly, dried for a day and then fried.
“All of it is fried crispy,” Guarnaschelli said. “You are a bad, bad girl. I thought this was a salad.”
Also in the episode, Werts pops over to Southold Fish Market to pick up her special of the day — sea bass.
“Every little piece of this place, every little ingredient you picked out is just as carefully put together,” Guarnaschelli said. “This is more like a home than most restaurants I’ve been in.”
“It was always a goal for us to appeal to the locals and how we did that was it feels like home when you walk in,” Werts responds.
To watch the full episodes of Guarnaschelli exploring these two local North Fork favorite restaurants, download the Food Network app and search for the show’s title, Fix Me a Plate. You can get a Premium subscription for 30 days free before purchasing for $39.99 a year.
