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.’ ”

Dishes from McGarry’s former restaurant, Gem Wine. Courtesy of Flynn McGarry

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

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