CHARM TO TABLE

The 26-year-old chef FLYNN MCGARRY has been wowing diners for more than a decade. His most ambitious project yet promises fully-fledged escapism

- NATE FREEMAN

NEW YORK CHEF Flynn McGarry spent his summer preparing to launch a highly anticipated fine-dining restaurant called Cove, which opens this month on Houston Street in West SoHo. But for a big chunk of June and July, he did that prep from luscious rural fields on Long Island, shuttling between town and country and occasionally making construction decisions while multitasking. “On Friday, I was out here literally cutting lobsters open on FaceTime,” he said, “being like, ‘Put the tile there.”

It was a Saturday in July, and McGarry was walking through Isabella Rossellini’s 28-acre Mama Farm in Brookhaven, through the pens of chickens and cows and chirping birds. Since putting down roots there to grow herbs and vegetables for Cove, he’s gotten so tight with the dozens of goats that he was on a first-name basis with at least one of them. “That's Gertrude Stein,” he said, pointing.