Opinion: Are Hamptons Restaurants Becoming Too Expensive ?

They used to say eating out at certain restaurants could cost you a leg and arm. Of course, they were always joking. However, the price of eating out at the popular trendy East End restaurants is no longer a laughing matter. Dinner for six now can cost more than $1,000 with dessert, two drinks each and a coffee.

If you live or vacation out east you know folks this has happened to. The bizarre thing is it is happening to them at the very restaurants they have always gone to without these high price results. Even if you are not shelling out a $1,000 for dinner, it is costing you a few hundred more than you thought when you walked in.

I have been surprised about how many financially comfortably-off friends have been bringing up this issue. In the past, conversations about East End dining were about how great the food was, what the special was, or the amazing dessert. Recently one friend said they were charged “$18 extra” at a favorite well-known establishment on the beach of Shelter Island for bread with their order of mussels.

Yet another, again financially well-off friend, had a party of three end up with “a check over $500,” at a traditional French restaurant in Bridgehampton. A place he really liked. It sounded like he may not be going back anytime soon. They had just one drink each with the meal!

I myself have experienced what I call “dining sticker shock,” a few times this year. Once in our favorite hotel in Sag Harbor and the other a well known Italian restaurant in East Hampton. In fact, even at a famous breakfast -luncheonette in Bridgehampton a friend and I went for a hamburger deluxe, and when we received the bill promised each other we would have our next hamburger at the “Palm in East Hampton,” because it would cost the same but be a better burger!

I will not dwell on the local restaurants still enforcing the 10 p.m. Covid rule for last call, but truth be known too many restaurants are not taking new orders past 9 p.m., blaming it of all things on a shortage of help.

I have had my boat in the same marina in East Hampton for 20 years. Nearby is a pizza place called “Pepperoni’s.” Sometimes after a sail, a friend and I might go there for a slice. In years past, the limited seating there would be full in the summer in the evening. The trend is now the seats are empty, but there is a really long line of folks picking up their phoned-in “whole pizza pie” orders. Actually, most folks walk out with a few boxes with pizzas. I guess it’s becoming the average person's way of saving a few hundred dollars for a dinner while on vacation in the Hamptons.

Even with the shorter dining hours, getting a sitting at a popular East End restaurant isn’t what it used to be. Now the waits on weekend are short, if at all, and almost non-existent on weekdays. It’s bizarre that places only opened in the summer are taking days off during the week.

They say the restaurant business is a tough business. However, is it a good business practice to have your patron leaving feeling like they were “over-charged?” My grandfather who came from Italy used to have a favorite saying from the old country, it went something like this: “It’s one thing to stick an umbrella up someone’s arse, but it’s another thing to open it.” If you have dined at a high-end East End restaurant this summer you understand what my grandfather was expressing.