Lola's Kitchen & Cocktails opens in Eastport

It often takes a new restaurant some time to find its audience, but less than a week after Lola’s Kitchen & Cocktails opened in Eastport last month, it was already mobbed at 5 p.m. on a Wednesday evening, with guests enjoying small plates like seared scallops with Creole corn and bacon stew or Korean fried cauliflower with pickled radish; mains like pastrami-spiced duck or a Wagyu burger with bourbon-balsamic-onion jam — and, perhaps, sipping the signature Lolita (tequila, coconut and pineapple liqueurs, triple sec and lime).

Granted, it’s a tiny place (16 seats at the bar, another 20 at tables). And, granted, it has a tempting Happy Hour menu. But it’s also true that owner Dana McCall appears to have hit a home run.

"We’re from here," she said. "We knew what the area needed. I just opened the place that I wanted to go to."

The area to which she is referring is that cluster of towns — Eastport, Manorville, Speonk, Remsenburg, the Moriches — directly west of Westhampton, populated by folks looking for a chic-casual restaurant and yet curiously devoid of dining options. The problem gets worse in the summer, when seasonal residents crowd out the locals on the roads and in the restaurants.

"My husband and I are diehards at Ivy in Westhampton Beach, Canal Cafe in Hampton Bays," she observed, "but we get knocked out from June to September."

Since Lola is open daily (and serves brunch on weekends), the couple’s dining-out days may be seriously curtailed.

Although this is her first restaurant, McCall owns Hamptons Catered Affairs and Long Island Lobster Bake in Hampton Bays and The Kitchen at Sportime, a sports-club cafe, in Quogue. She’d had the concept for Lola’s — "high-caliber food and drinks, stylish room" — for years but could not find the right property: "I wanted something on Main Street in Eastport, but there was nothing available." She was not initially drawn to the sliver of a storefront in the village’s decidedly non-stylish King Kullen shopping center but, "I was so past the point that I really wanted to do this I said, ‘Fine. We’ll do it in a strip mall.’ It’s not on Main Street, it’s not on the water, but if we do it well, people will come."

McCall recruited chef Scott Andriani, whose resume includes Salt & Barrel in Bay Shore, Bijou (now The Halston) in Melville and, most recently, Revival by Toast in Port Jefferson. In planning the menu, McCall once again was guided by her own preferences. "We were on the same page — no salmon, no branzino, nothing that isn’t sourced correctly." All Lola’s fish comes from Mastic Seafood, the produce from local distributors such as Peter’s Fruit (Yaphank) or Olish’s (Eastport).

The menu features 18 small plates ($10 for citrus-marinated olives to $25 for octopus with warm fingerling potatoes) and seven mains ($26 for market vegetable tagliatelle to $48 for Wagyu skirt steak with roasted sweet potatoes, charred broccolini and pineapple chimichurri).

The olives are available at Happy Hour (3 to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday) for $7 along with $10 small plates (Little Gem Caesar salad, French onion dip with homemade potato chips, whipped ricotta with black-truffle honey and sourdough) and $1.50 local oysters. Good beers are $6, good wines are $8 and the signature Lolita, usually $19, can be quaffed for $12. There’s also weekend brunch menu whose highlights include South Shore clam chowder ($17), grains & greens bowl ($19), fried chicken sando with hot honey Dijonnaise ($22) and a warm lobster roll ($36).

Lola’s Kitchen & Cocktails, 13  Eastport Manor Rd., Eastport, 631-604-9500, lolaseastport.com.