On a warm Monday morning, Scottish Bakehouse owner Daniele Dominick sits in her comfortable Oak Bluffs living room reading to her 17-month-old son Rocco who is snuggled in her lap.

A surge of new restaurants in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs have filled new niches to expand offerings outside the norm, from gluten-free pizza to a whiskey bar.

Ten years ago looking for a change of pace, Scott Jones and Kell Hicklin left their suits and ties down south and bought the Lambert’s Cove Inn and Restaurant in West Tisbury.

“Who would’ve thought we’d be bottle feeding goats four times a day?” said Mr. Hicklin. “It’s a long way from the corporate world.”

Josh Aronie started his career at the Home Port restaurant in Menemsha, where he parlayed his job as a window washer into a gig as a prep cook. Three decades of restaurant experience later, he is returning to the restaurant this year as the chef.

People are happy to wait in line for a spot in a booth or at the counter. That’s because for many, Linda Jean’s restaurant in Oak Bluffs is a home away from home. Doors open at 6 a.m., and in the summer months there are already people outside waiting.

It was a short run for Edgartown restaurant Eleven North, which closed for business after several months of tension with the town over issues including flooding and handicapped accessibility.

Josh Aronie, chef at Cafe Moxie in Vineyard Haven and formerly of the Menemsha Cafe, has been approved to operate an off-season food truck in the parking lot of the Chilmark Store. Mr. Aronie said he plans to serve a daily soup, tacos, sandwiches, falafels and a Brazilian lunch plate.

With the temperature in the low 30s and a wintry mix blowing in off the East River, it was a morning fit for neither man nor beast. And yet a calm but energized feel pervaded as the Beach Plum crew got down to work creating the pop-up restaurant Fish and Rose.

After 20 years of serving pizzas and Italian fare in the heart of Edgartown, Lattanzi’s Restaurant is closed for business.

Up-Island heads downtown next week as chef and farmer Chris Fischer opens a popup restaurant in New York city. Mr. Fischer, the chef at the Beach Plum Restaurant in Chilmark, is converting the old Bowery street subway station into Fish and Rose.