Despite the annual urgings of two old friends who live on Hilton Head Island, my reluctance to visit was based on a bias against meticulously planned communities for golfers, second homers and retirees residing in way-too-large homes on way-too-manicured grounds.  Still, in trying to put such biases behind me and with a desire to be proven wrong, I made the trip to Hilton Head and found it an extremely pleasant place with remarkably good local restaurants beyond the usual upscale chains and places with the word “Cap’n” in their names. Indeed, a local dining guide lists more than 60 indigenous restaurants from seafood houses to Southern Low Country eateries.
    Let’s get the usual stats out of the way to show the breadth of Hilton Head’s activities.  Ten family beaches, 350 tennis courts and 24 championship golf courses, including layouts by such noted architects as Robert Trent Jones, Pete Dye, George Fazio, Rees Jones, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus.  (Golf Digest has HH Number 10 on its list of the world’s best golf destinations.)
       The first resort that always pops up in conversation is the vast, sprawling Westin Hilton Head Island Resort & Spa (right), which re-opened in 2013 after a $30 million renovation.  I stayed there for a few days and found it a serviceable and efficiently run large hotel situated within the Port Royal Plantation on the Atlantic Ocean, with access to one of three golf courses at the Port Royal Golf Club, and tennis available at the Port Royal Racquet Club.
     Located within the 5,000-acre Sea Pines community, The Sea Pines Resort (below) has been a premier destination for half a century, home of an annual PGA Tour golf tournament (well known to golf fans for its distinctive red-and-white lighthouse just behind the 18th green).  Sea Pines actually pre-dates the 1983 incorporation of HH, which is named after William Hilton, the first Englishman to scout the island in 1663.  Even before his arrival though, pirates, Spaniards and Huguenots had sought refuge on the amoeba-shaped island with a good harbor, and Native Americans had been there for more than four millennia.  The first English settlers arrived in 1717 and by the turn of the century the island’s long-staple Sea Island cotton became an important crop and industry, along with indigo, sugar cane and rice raised on plantations. The slaves freed during the Civil War stayed on but, sadly, remnants of their Gullah culture are all but gone.  Development pretty much displaced them all on Daufuskie Island.
    HH was only reachable by private boat and ferry until the construction of the James F. Byrnes Bridge in 1956, the same year the erection of Sea Pines Resort began, spurring rapid development of the island as a resort community.  Led by Sea Pines’ founder, Charles E. Fraser, HH has always been critically involved in maintaining its environment, not least when its citizenry successfully beat back the installation of off-shore oil platforms and a liquefied natural gas shipping facility.
     One of the best places to get a sense of both the early and contemporary environmental concerns of HH is at the Coastal Discovery Museum, set on 69 acres of diverse natural beauty, both aquatic and on terra firma, with grand vistas of waving marshes (right) and turtle-rich bogs, along with pampered gardens and huge wild oaks, cedars and pines.  There is also a two-hour dolphin research tour and shrimp trawling expeditions.
    The central building, called the Discovery House (below), is the oldest (1859); it showcases Low Country history through art and artifacts, with many children’s programs. There is also a Pole Barn that houses farm equipment, and a restored horse barn.   On Oct. 8, the Kiwanis Club of Hilton Head Island will host the 32nd Annual Chili Cook-off at the museum.
    Much of the charm of HH comes, however, by touring, as much as is possible, along the back roads and byways that curve throughout the island into beautiful shady enclaves of elegantly appointed homes like Port Royal (below). Many, to be sure, are within gated communities you can only visit by invitation, but what struck me most was the complete lack of cookie-cutter architecture.  My biased expectations of many connected structures done in the style of so many Southern resort communities, or of absurdly ostentatious mansions of a kind you find in Palm Beach, evaporated in view of the finely designed individual homes, all impeccably landscaped.
    If everything about these residences seems just a little too neat, too secluded and too exclusive, it is the price residents are willing to pay for peace and quiet.  That price is a high one, and there is always the fear that HH may grow and grow and grow until it looks more like the troubled development of Sea Island, Georgia, or the oddly eerie WaterColor houses of South Walton, Florida.
    There is a hint of that already in the sheer number of cars and trucks creeping down Route 278, the island’s main roadway, which in season can be as crowded as the New England Thruway during rush hour. But for now, HH maintains its unique calm and its natural beauty, and that’s well worth fighting for.

Next Issue:  Dining Out on Hilton Head

NEW YORK CORNER
By John Mariani

SALTAIRE OYSTER BAR
AND FISH HOUSE

    I had not given much thought to visiting Saltaire in the New York City suburb of Port Chester until I read that the owners are the Barnes family, which also runs the excellent seafood restaurant in Queens called London Lennie’s.  I figured that if Leslie and Elizabeth Barnes are carrying on a 57-year-old legacy of first-rate seafood and hospitality at their new place, I should definitely check it out.  I did and found it even better than its antecedent.
    Largely my opinion is based upon the exceptional quality of seafood the Barnes family has always purchased, all on full display at Saltaire, so that the simplest of dishes are no-brainers as options from a large menu. You simply can’t go wrong.  But it is in the prepared dishes that I think Saltaire exceeds London Lennie's, and chef Cedric Lamouille, formerly at Bistro V in nearby Greenwich, Connecticut, is to be complimented for training a brigade of cooks and a fine pastry chef who are turning out some of the finest seafood on the East Coast.
    For years this had been a cavernous steakhouse, originally a granary, and the Barneses have pretty much kept everything intact while sprucing up the bar and dining room and improving the lighting with beautiful chandeliers. Maritime artwork, maps, charts and paraphernalia evoke the restaurant’s name (Long Island Sound is just blocks away).  The waitstaff is fleet-footed and well informed, and the noise level is quite acceptable for such a big room.
    The wine list is still growing, with wines available by the glass or carafe, all with reasonable mark-ups on the bottles (most under $70), and an impressive bar list of spirits, with eight beers on tap and as many signature cocktails ($11-$13).
    The four-page menu begins with a wide selection from the raw bar, which on any given night offers a dozen oyster varieties, and towers of seafood ($45 to $135), as well as ceviches ($14) and poke ($13).  Every kitchen does fried calamari, but few as carefully as at Saltaire, with an orange-poppyseed dipping sauce with pickled chilies and basil ($15).  The grilled Mediterranean octopus ($16), accompanied by edamame and hummus, with black garlic aïoli and crunchy toasted almonds, shows that every dish here is not just a copy of those everywhere else. 
    I recall that the crab cake at London Lennie’s was crab and nothing but crab, but, though Saltaire’s ($16) is good, it seems to have more breading than the original. There are then soups and salads and four mussel offerings ($18). Since it was near the end of the soft-shell crab season, I couldn’t resist ordering them with roasted fingerling potatoes, sautéed broccoli rabe and a sweet beurre blanc sweetened with pomegranate ($31).  They may have been the best soft shells I’ve had all season, and the New Bedford sea scallops with shaved Brussels sprouts, mushroom ragoût and the unexpected pleasure of Parmesan cheese and truffle emulsion ($35) was equally delicious.  I commend as well the chef’s way with wild striped bass with a beet risotto that was not only beautiful but perfectly rendered in texture and flavor  ($32).   I also sampled a dish from the “Top of the Catch” section, which included a fresh-as-the-sea Florida red snapper with a tomato velouté ($32).
    Most of the time in seafood restaurants of this stripe and size, the kitchen takes the easy route to please with cliché desserts, but at Saltaire a great deal of care has been put into an item called “Almond Joy,” composed of a bittersweet chocolate crémeux with toasted almonds, strawberry and coconut sorbet that for once really tasted like coconut ($10).  Cheesecake ($11) is very good, scented with orange blossom, topped with poached apricots and apricot glaze, with an almond lace cookie, the kind of dessert you expect to find in very high-end restaurants.
    It is to damn Saltaire with faint praise to say it is merely a first-rate seafood house, for while it resembles others in its genre, it is really in its own league, one where you start with the best ingredients, treat them imaginatively but simply, and carry the commitment to excellence straight through dessert.  Saltaire is the kind of place that changes the game. 

Open for lunch Mon.-Fri.; dinner nightly. Parking is difficult in the area, but there is usually plenty of space two blocks away at the movie theater.

According to USA Today, "Milwaukee police say a customer upset with his order at a Taco Bell shot into the restaurant’s drive-thru window.Taco Bell management says that after leaving with his order, the man was upset to discover the employees forgot to add sour cream. He called the restaurant and the manager told him to come back the next day for a free meal because they were closed. Authorities say the man returned a short time later, about 12:20 a.m. Monday, and shot at the bullet-proof window and an employee’s car. No one was hurt. Police are looking for the man."