Event location: Beechnut Hill Farm, Scuttlehole Road and Cooks Lane Bridgehampton, NY

For reservations or more information, please call (212) 627-2308.

These days, America couldn't be farther from the "nation of farmers" envisioned by Thomas Jefferson. But that doesn't mean that many of us city- or suburb-dwellers don't dream of leading a simpler life on our own little acre of green. And as long as we're constructing a fantasy, we'd prefer it if our rural paradise were located in the Hamptons, that most New York of getaways with all the conveniences (Citarella, Saks Fifth Avenue, Eli's Bread) of home.

This month, Henry Meer, chef/owner of the very urban outposts City Hall and Cub Room, is offering our idea of the perfect respite from the urban jungle-an evening of merrymaking on Beechnut Hill Farm in Southampton. Festivities will include a cooking class taught by Meer, and live music from the band Country Jubilee, who will play country favorites. A square dance instructor will be on hand to help even those with two left feet join in the fun. Meanwhile, kids will have the chance to do a little harvesting of their own in the farm's many vegetable patches, and at meal's end, will be encouraged to take a turn cranking at the ice cream maker. All this, along with the beauty of nature and an al fresco meal good enough for demanding New York foodies.

The beautiful Beechnut Hill Farm is owned by Meer's cousin, Dr. Fred Heilbut and includes 12 acres of land where Meer plays gentleman farmer when he is not tending to his kitchens. Summer months find him trucking heirloom tomatoes, breakfast radishes, and Silver Queen corn-products of his own seeding, hoeing, weeding, and watering-to his restaurants in the city.

Meer, a graduate of the CIA, spent several intensive years at two of New York's top French restaurants, working with Jean-Jacques Rachou at La Côte Basque and Andrè Soltner at Lutèce. Since then, he has become known for his superb renditions of classic New York food, which Gourmet's David Rosengarten called "strikingly fine" in a review of Cub Room. Rosengarten wrote that Meer had perfected meatloaf and pot roast with red cabbage and spaetzle, and also praised the "sensational" aged sirloin with mushrooms and polenta. New York critic Gael Greene liked Cub Room's "splendid contemporary American food" and called Meer's duck "not another dumb duck breast...lush and lean, crisp and faintly sweet." Of City Hall she wrote that it "distills and honors the New York steakhouse...better in ways than the original." Meer's Chesapeake she-crab soup, she noted, is "creamy perfection," and the "marvelous" double steak on the bone, "a behemoth." Summing up the mood of City Hall, Jane Freiman formerly of Newsday observed that "the soft jazzy spirit of [Cub Room] is as New York as a pair of Tootsie Plohound heels."

What could be more New York in summertime than a weekend in the Hamptons? As the season wraps up, join the quintessential Manhattan chef for simple, good food under the Hamptons' soft blue skies, and kissed by the salty, tangy scent of the sea.