Former Red Bar, Inn Spot Joining East Hampton Restaurant Group; Sant Ambroeus Expands Eastward

The investment group that purchased East Hampton Point from the Krupinski estate last year for $18 million has purchased three other South Fork restaurants in recent months: the former Red Bar Brasserie in Southampton Village, the Inn Spot on the Bay in Hampton Bays and the former Harbor Bistro, which neighbors East Hampton Point.

A spokesperson for the burgeoning new restaurant group says that all three of the new eateries are undergoing renovations and are expected to be open for business by the end of June.

Red Bar will be resurrected as a classic French bistro, to be called Enchante — “Nice to meet you” in French — that will open in June and will feature a new outdoor patio.

The group paid $3.4 million for the property in early February. Renovations at the Hampton Road building, which has been shuttered since before the pandemic, began this week.

The waterfront Inn Spot in Hampton Bays was sold by longtime chef-owners Collette Connor and Pam Wolfert last summer for just under $4 million. The property includes nine guest cottages, which are in the midst of being renovated along with the 117-seat restaurant.

The Inn Spot’s classic American menu will be replaced by Crash Cantina, a casual, modern Mexican-influenced menu featuring tacos and rice bowls and ingredients like jerk lime shrimp, oxtail birria and smoked mushrooms. The restaurant plans to tap the property’s large outdoor patio facing the summertime Shinnecock Bay sunsets.

The investment group behind the new restaurant ventures has been reported to be headed by Heath Freeman, co-founder of Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that has become notorious for its purchases and gutting of local newspaper companies around the country.

Freeman and a group of unnamed partners purchased the 5-acre East Hampton Point property on Three Mile Harbor Road in the Springs in March 2021 from the estate of the late Ben and Bonnie Krupinski for $18 million. The new owners quickly raised eyebrows when they hiked the fees for docking boats at the marina, driving out many longtime tenants.

The restaurant was reopened last summer — minus the historic Olympic sailboat in the barroom, which was scrapped — as Si Si, a Mediterranean-theme in the cavernous, open-air dining room and sprawling outdoor decks.

In September, the group purchased the neighboring restaurant building — once-upon-a-time the nightlife hotspot Seawolf, and most recently home to Harbor Bistro — that the group says will serve as an expansion of the EHP Resort’s offerings, to be known as Sunset Harbor.

“Sunset Harbor will offer a range of shareable American fare including feature items such as shrimp scampi topped with fresh crab, spicy lobster rigatoni, and signature sushi rolls — all with undisturbed sunset views,” a description of the restaurant from the group’s spokesperson, Greer Brody of Murphy O’Brien, says.

Sunset Harbor and Crash Cantina are expected to open by Memorial Day.

The Sant Ambroeus restaurant group will open its second Hamptons location this summer in East Hampton Village, in the restaurant space that was home to Babette’s from 1996 until last October.

The classical Milanese ristorante/pasticceria/gelateria will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner starting this summer — though an opening date is not yet firm.

East Hampton will be the seventh Sant Ambroeus, joining the one in Southampton, four in Manhattan and one in Palm Beach.

The restaurants trace their lineage back to the original Sant Ambroeus that opened in Milan in 1936. The first New York location opened on Madison Avenue in 1983. The Southampton location opened in 1992.

Sant Ambroeus’s parent company, SA Hospitality, also owns the Felice group of Tuscan restaurants and wine bars, which has seven locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and the Manhattan restaurant Casa Lever, as well as several coffee bars, patisseries and gelaterias around Manhattan.