Round Swamp Farm

Memorial Day Weekend. Round Swamp Farm re-opened for the season exactly 21 days ago. 21 blessed days! I don't know about you, but for me it's been a long, cold winter. The wait from Thanksgiving until Round Swamp opens again is a hold-your-breath kind of thing. Who wants to go into a kind of extended withdrawal from every kind of ultimate summer delight? Never mind that--how can a person even tolerate being without their coconut cream pie??? How?

If you are not an initiate, let me give you the low-down. Round Swamp Farm is the farm stand you would expect to find on the road to heaven. It is a marvel--it looks and feels so perfectly as you want it to, that it seems to have materialized through some sort of otherworldly computer-generated holograph.

Let me say that I am very happy when I am there. I am very much aware of being alive at Round Swamp Farm; aware, too, of my proud place, shoulder-to-shoulder, within a community of deeply discriminating devotees.

When I walk in from the gravel parking lot under the widespread shade tree, deep-set off Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton--I have a brief moment of feeling like the world is, and always has been, an abundant, loving place to live. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm talking about a farm stand, right? Anyway, in that state of innocence and blessing, I begin. And let's just say this--they do not fuck around at Round Swamp Farm.

The first of three baked-goods areas hits you right as you walk in. There you will behold Lisa's famous "Ultimate Cookies (chocolate chip, raisin, you name it)," and her "Lemon Drops," along with the new "Almond Drops." The drop cookies are tiny round shortbreads. But dare I say--they are so much more. To me, for instance, they are the way to have a soul-warming breakfast. They are the way to have a snack that feels measured by its serenity. But let's not get stuck there--the raspberry-filled cookies are a matter of deep, deep stuff. They come nine to a pack, and they are hard to get home. I have taken a raspberry cookie poll of my Round Swamp brethren, and they agree--hard to get home. Hey, it's not just their cookies--I've been known to finish their macaroni salad in the parking lot (and I don't even like macaroni salad).

And that is just the barest of starts. Five and a half feet further on you encounter a door through which you enter the refrigerated produce room. Come on--shouldn't everyplace have a refrigerated room to choose your produce from in the summer? Well, this one has the best looking basil this side of San Remo, Charlie's arugula, and corn picked fresh all day from their fields out back. But it's not just the incredible herbs, fruits, and amazing swath of lettuce varieties--the room has total magic. Just leave it at that.

Another seven feet and you've encountered the realm of the chicken. Realm of the chicken? Well, yeah. There is no place I know of where I am more inclined to buy so many different forms of chicken! Not even close. Without wanting to reprise the shrimp-list-scene from Forest Gump, herewith a list of my regular chicken purchases: chicken salad (let's not even get into it--it's simply chicken, no gimmicks whatsoever, and better than it ever should be), chicken buffalo balls, roasted chicken (make no mistake--Lisa roasts a mean chicken), chicken skewers, chicken pot pie (I am a serious chicken pot pie man, and this is the very best chicken pot pie in the world), picnic chicken, chicken tenders, chicken wontons (new last year--these things are the most ridiculously addictive pop-ems ever), chicken dumplings...excuse me, I'm entering a sort of Round Swamp Chicken-induced fugue state.

But wait, we haven't even come yet to the thing everyone rhapsodizes about at Round Swamp--their pies! Ok, let us be reverent here. There is nothing here to be taken lightly. These are the most supernal, everlastingly delicious pies that will ever pass your lips. These are not regular pies. I am sure that if I stood with Lisa, in her kitchen, with her ingredients, and she told me exactly what to do and how to do it, correcting technique--whatever she needed--that I could not produce one. The crumbled crust is a thing of wonder, with tendrils that reach down deep. Into your soul. If I ever have to somehow choose the best summer dessert ever--it might be her blueberry-peach crumb pie. Except that it might be her coconut cream pie (also new, two years ago).

Hey, I hadn't had a slice of coconut cream pie until Round Swamp brought it roaring back into my life, since I was a teenager in New Jersey. Why? Well, if you grew up near Verona, NJ, you probably spent a fair amount of time at the Claremont Diner, home of the yummiest possible coconut cream pie. The place was famous for it (it was famous, too, for Frankie Valli, of Four Seasons fame, having his own centrally located, and always reserved for him, table in the "new room" of the place). I never even considered trying a pretender to coconut cream pie after the Claremont. Until Round Swamp--now I dream about it and wonder greatly about how much weight can be gained from it over the course of a summer.

But what about the main counter of baked yumminess? What can I say? By the time you turn the pie corner your basket is usually too full to even manage, let alone open enough for the peach corn muffins or the pecan sticky buns. But you don't have a choice--what are you gonna do? Go home without them? Now you're talking silly. So you join the line and you rush a mexican three-cheese dip, with a baguette and a macaroni salad onto the counter, last-minute kinda thing.

Then Jeannie tells you how the baby's doing (fifteen months now, getting really big), she calls you honey eleven or more times (she once called me honey three times in one sentence--try it), and rings you up with the precision of a genetics engineer. Oh, did I mention that Round Swamp is expensive? I mean really expensive. Hey, it doesn't seem like it--and you don't care. Really--you don't. But they don't even have prices on anything, and I don't know anyone who has ever asked. Well, not anyone who gets to come back anyway. Who would ask? You would be ostracized, persona non grata (as well you should).

But don't go there, please. We regulars do not want you to further crowd our beloved farm stand (and let it be known--regular-hood is not easily earned! I have been going regularly, devotedly, to Round Swamp for more than 25 years. Two years ago was the first time Carolyn (the proprietor) kissed me hello for the season).

If you do go though, if you really must--say hello for me.