Hungry, hungry Hamptons: NYC restaurants follow “gold rush”

For the Hamptons crowd, summer began in mid-March this year as they fled a city becoming the global epicenter of the pandemic.

Many of their beloved Manhattan restaurants were in tow, reports The Wall Street Journal.

As New York City enters phase three of its reopening today, an indefinite ban on indoor dining continues. Elsewhere in the state, restaurants can seat patrons indoors at 50 percent capacity.

Café Boulud, Carbone and Il Buco have established pick-up or delivery services on the East End, and city bars Dante and Death & Co. have also set up shop there.

“It was totally crazy. It was just like, ‘Let’s do this,’” said Donna Lennard, who owns Il Buco and formed a partnership with the Marram hotel in Montauk.

Marc Glosserman, owner of Hill Country Barbecue Market in Flatiron, turned his East Hampton home into a pickup location for the restaurant’s Texas-style barbeque.

Restaurants have sought creative ways to limit their overhead expenses while following the outflow of revenue from the city and delivering a sense of normalcy to their customers. For some, the venture has not been cheap.

Kissaki, a Japanese restaurant with Manhattan locations, put in close to $125,000 to build its service in the East End hamlet of Water Mill, not including rent.

City restaurants, meanwhile, that rely on indoor dining have found that they need to negotiate new lease terms. Some landlords have been willing to defer rent payments or take temporary cuts based on the health of their tenants’ business. [WSJ] — Orion Jones