Things happen in the restaurant business so fast at this time of year you’d need a blog or a Twitter feed to keep up with it all. As would be expected, a lot of moves are being finalized as the start of the summer season crests the horizon.
Two beloved stalwarts are back in business: Almond in Bridgehampton and Magic’s Pub in Westhampton Beach. Another, Red Bar, is branching out. And one, Della Femina in East Hampton, may be turning off its lights for reasons nobody can fathom.
Some restaurant mini-empires are expanding, while others are wracked by internal strife. And a few welcome new faces have popped up. These are intriguing and perplexing times.
As usual, most of the news is coming from east of the canal. But the good news for Westhamptonites is that Magic’s will be open again soon, with a new owner taking over for the creepy bondage guy. I guess almost anything will be an improvement in that regard, as long as he/she/they don’t try to improve on exactly what Magic’s has been doing perfectly for decades.
Absolutely the most stunning news to have come out of the local restaurant scene in a long time, maybe ever, is word of a deal that could shutter Della Femina in East Hampton. Some usually reliable channels have it that there is already a contract, though maybe not one that has all the dots and crosses in it yet.
The boisterous Mr. Della Femina himself confirmed for one of Off the Menu’s many operatives this week that the restaurant is indeed for sale (as is “everything I own,” he said) and that there are several parties very interested. But he denied that a sale has been inked—in other words a transfer has not yet taken place. Staff members have been cryptic or claimed ignorance but nobody has touched talk of a pending deal—that is to say, nobody denied it.
What’s baffling most restaurant folk, or any business person at all, is why Mr. Jerry would want to sell. The restaurant runs itself and probably not only covers its own expenses but maybe even drops some dimes in his pocket here and there.
The building is certainly valuable, but it’s probably a bit less valuable now than it will be in a few years. The famously antiestablishment ad man ranted something to a Southampton Press reporter about the government and socialist redistribution of wealth being the catalyst for his selling of his house here and, ostensibly, the restaurant.
Why you would want to liquefy your assets when you’re worried about someone robbing your piggy bank is beyond my casual understanding of that kind of Tea Bagger nonsense but whatever the reason, it seems very unfair to those of us who prefer to see the proliferation of good restaurants, not a diminution, Jerry. (*Shakes fist*)
Obviously there’s no word on who the potential buyer could be, but there have been some pretty heavy hitters around lately. The Maccioni family, of Le Cirque fame, has been seen about town scoping out possible joints, most notably waterfront albatross East Hampton Point. If a Della deal does go down, maybe longtime doorman Walter Struble and homegrown chef Michael Rozzi will open their own place (with a little seed money support from Jerry, perhaps?). Talk about a sure thing if you can grab the right spot.
Yeah, the right spot. Ah, those words that can make dreams come true or shatter them like a wine goblet over the ice bin.
The building at the corner of Ocean Road and Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton would seem to be one of the rightest of right spots. A big airy dining room and bar, a Main Street storefront in a restaurant-savvy hamlet and plenty of parking. And yet a series of fairly well-funded runs have crashed and burned there.
Well, we get to find out now. Proven winners, Eric Lemonides and Jason Weiner, the owners of Almond, are renovating the space and will reopen their French-ish bistro there sometime in May. No doubt the vibrant scene Eric fomented at the original Almond will bring the sort of life back to that end of the hamlet that hasn’t been seen since the days when One Ocean Road and Boom Bistro owned the dining scene in Bridgehampton, and 95 School Street—with manager David Lowenberg at the door—was at the quiet end of the street.
Certainly Pierre’s across the street and maybe even Southfork Kitchen up the turnpike a half-mile or so will benefit from the boost of energy the new Almond should inject into that area.
Southfork Kitchen reopened a couple weeks ago for what is to be its first real season in business and has already overhauled its game plan and its management staff. Dinner is now a prix-fixe affair, a move a lot of the city’s most expensive spots have undertaken to combat the dreaded double-app diner. Hopefully at least two of the three courses can be appetizers, however, because with shad roe, Spanish mackerel and seared squid on the starters any “seafoody” worth his
fleur de sel
is going to have a hard time choosing just one. From a seat at the bar near the kitchen doors the other night, the food looked superb.
At about $60 per person with the tax before you’ve had a drink it’s pretty pricey but eating with Bruce Buschel’s sustainable seafood principles in mind comes at a cost, folks. We’ll see how principled the crowds are during the week in the shoulder seasons.
Up the street a short bit, in the space that used to be Ziggy’s—now that Ziggy has moved over to run Nichols—is a new tapas joint called M & E. As if moving into a difficult spot that is not on many people’s radar and has seen its share of flops weren’t enough, I can’t remember when a restaurant has gotten less buzz surrounding its opening. Someone call Steve Haweeli.
Also in Bridgehampton, the old Almond building—no, it’s not Al’s Woodshed Restaurant again—is supposedly slated to be reopened as a sports bar with a Mexican food menu.
In Southampton Village, Red Bar owners David Loewenberg and Kirk Bassnight are in line to take over the former Buckley’s/Featherstones space, a classic English pub design, behind Jobs Lane. The word is they will tweak it into a slightly upscale pub-ish kind of place, a la Rowdy Hall. Loewenberg has pretty much never missed the mark with a vision for a restaurant so whatever he has up his sleeve should be interesting.
Meeting House in East Hampton is open again after months of renovations and, well, it’s the Meeting House still. The menu is pretty much the same, with some additions, the booths are gone and the artwork is different but other than that I don’t know what the big to-do was about. No word yet on what is going into Exile. A second LT Burger sounds like it’s off the table, but it can’t be long before someone snatches it up.
So, with all that, and Michael Gluckman’s truck parked at the old JL East spot in East Hampton, an awful lot there is clearly going to be a lot in flux in the restaurant scene before the first cosmos get spilled on linen pants. Stay tuned.
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