New Restaurant Culaccino In Water Mill Brings A Healthy Twist To Italian Food

Chef Jon Albrecht is onto his next project with the recently opened Culaccino, an Italian restaurant with a modern twist in Water Mill.

He has been working in the food industry in the Hamptons for about 30 years, beginning humbly as a busboy at age 16. He has since worked in renowned restaurants such as The American Hotel in Sag Harbor and Babette’s in East Hampton.

Mr. Albrecht seemed to be a bit of a juxtaposition, talking fast while leaning back in his chair casually. He said he moved to Florida briefly to do restaurant consulting after his short stay as opening chef for Doppio in Sag Harbor, a relocation that didn’t stick.

He returned to the Hamptons last year to open Flagship in Montauk with Eric Miller, a chef who Mr. Albrecht previously worked with as chef de cuisine at Madison & Main in Sag Harbor. Mr. Albrecht decided to open his own restaurant this summer because of fortuitous circumstances.

He was consulting for the owner of the The Deli at Water Mill, located in the front of the property where Culaccino is now. The owner approached about the space. “My friend who owns the property came to me and said, ‘Hey, I own the restaurant space in back and it’s empty,’ and I said, ‘Really?’ And that was it, that’s all it took,” he said.

The menu has undergone some changes as it developed, beginning more traditionally, then moving toward a café-style menu, to finally settle in the uniquely modern and healthy take on Italian food that it holds now.

“My vision was to do traditional Italian cuisine in a modern presentation, and things changed, things took a thousand-degree turn,” Mr. Albrecht said. He said that his working with Joshua Brockner, the chef du cuisine for the restaurant, showed him there needed to be changes to the menu. “He said to me, ‘It’s a good menu, but you’re doing the same thing everyone else is doing, and that’s not what you wanna do.’” Mr. Albrecht said he agreed, and they developed the menu they now serve.

He said it began with edamame spaghetti and blossomed into an array of healthy, organic food that still held some aspects of traditional Italian. He said the restaurant even cooks with coconut and avocado oil as opposed to olive oil because of the health benefits.

“Our chicken Milanese is organic chicken, the beef is grass-fed and organic, and the wild boar is wild boar—it can’t get more organic than that,” Mr. Albrecht said.

“We were both just so tired of what everybody else was doing and we didn’t want to repeat that,” he added. “So we’re trying to do dishes and we’re trying to do food that no one else, as far as we know in the Hamptons, at least, is doing.”

The restaurant has changed along with the menu—the spot that Mr. Albrecht believed would be popular for lunch and dinner has turned out to more of just the latter. “For this season, lunch didn’t click. It’s definitely a dinner spot, and our numbers are increasing each week which is great,” he said.

Culaccino has been open for only a few weeks, but Mr. Albrecht said he thinks it is going better than expected.

He said he was drawn to the kitchen initially because of his creative side, and the fact that he is more comfortable behind closed kitchen doors. “I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘That was a great meal,’ and in my head I’m like, ‘Oh, I hope it actually was.’”

The entrée that Mr. Albrecht is most excited about is the bucatini avocado carbonara, a pasta with a unique sauce of avocado, lemon juice, egg yolk, garlic, cream and pancetta.

Culaccino features both indoor and outdoor seating in a casual-chic setting, and Mr. Albrecht hopes that the restaurant will stay open all year. He said he spoke with chef Nicolas Reisini of Dopo la Spiaggia in Sag Harbor about doing a chef collaboration through the year, which would offer dinners and private cooking classes. For the summer, Culaccino will have a DJ series to start off with, Mr. Albrecht said, and then see what happens from there.

Culaccino is located at 670 Montauk Highway in Water Mill and is open from 5 to 11 p.m. for dinner seven days a week through the end of August. Beginning September 3, dinner will be served Wednesday through Sunday. Call 631-500-9310 for reservations.