Sebastian Guerrero (Port of Call) Materia Ristorante in Bantam

CHEF OF THE YEAR Renee Touponce

Mystic is having a pop-culture moment now. National publications have touted the small seaside town as an ideal vacation destination. Part of the reason is the food scene.

Renee Touponce is central in that scene as executive chef at Oyster Club and Port of Call. The restaurants are part of the 85th Day Food Community.

“I took the job because I loved what 85th Day was all about, very farm to table, they made everything in-house, there is a special bond between the cooks and the staff,” Touponce said.

Oyster Club is famed for its raw bar with items from Connecticut and Rhode Island. Other entrees are empanadas, whitefish kielbasa, duck leg, Jerusalem artichoke soup, house-made pastas.

Sebastian Guerrero rules over the bar at Port of Call, which offers drag shows, football games, concerts and other entertainment, and serves small plates of Touponce’s dishes. oysterclubct. com.

David Di Stasi worked at a three Michelin star seafood eatery in New York and a Japanese-influenced place in Sydney, Australia. But moving to Tuscany helped him realize what cuisine he wanted to focus on: that of his heritage.

He bought a restaurant at 637 Bantam Road in Bantam in March 2021 with his brother, Michael. They renamed it Materia and redid the whole menu.

“It comes from la materia prima, Italian for ‘the first quality of ingredients.’ Di Stasi said the food is Italian, not Italian-american. “Italian American is chicken parm, heavy sauces, large portions. Everything we do has history to it, something grandma would make, like Sunday ragout, you’d wake up to the smell of the sauce cooking,” he said.

The menu, divided into antipasti. primi and secondi, features octopus, sweetbreads, braised duck, rabbit, halibut and pastas, of course made in-house. See materiaristo.com.