Members Only
- Tracy Grathwohl
- Jul 24
- 4 min read
In the Hamptons, late spring and early summer are full of possibilities. And by possibilities, I mean new restaurants.
We have a steady turnover of restaurants in the East End because restauranteuring is hard. There’s no margin in food. Rents are high. It’s difficult to get experienced staff. But you know all this. You’ve seen “The Bear.”
I haven’t. “The Bear” is too stressful and nerve-wracking for me. I prefer to watch this shirtless guy on my Instagram who bakes cakes and let’s his pug lick the spoon. The guy’s abs are rock-hard, and he cracks eggs on them. It’s not exactly a sanitary baking method. I don’t care. I’m not the health department.
Now that I think of it, Jeremy Allen White, the lead in “The Bear,” has displayed his admirable rock-hard abs in Calvin Klein underwear ads. Maybe I should watch the show just in case he cracks an egg.
But back to early summer’s possibilities. We get excited when a new restaurant opens. It’s fresh meat! Unless it’s vegetarian.
Recently, I was in Water Mill and saw that the former Robert’s restaurant is now becoming a place called Zoe’s. I would’ve rushed straight home to check out Zoe’s website, but I was stuck in traffic.
When I finally got home, I looked it up. Zoe’s menu has the usual Hamptons’ fare: tuna crudo, watermelon and feta salad, and wagyu steak frites. The steak costs $250 for 12 ounces. Yikes! That’s expensive, especially since the other entrees are only $45. I understand why; wagyu beef is a delicacy. I’ve heard the grass-fed cattle are raised listening to classical music.
Zoe’s, in fact, isn’t a restaurant. It’s a private club with a $2500 annual fee. Yikes again! For that kind of money, that wagyu cattle better be listening to a cloned Beethoven performing live with Lady Gaga and Tupac’s hologram while maidens massage their haunches – I mean the cattle’s haunches, not Beethoven’s, Gaga’s, or Tupac’s.
I’m not naïve – restaurant prices can be pretty crazy out here, particularly when they offer $20 “bumps” of caviar, as Zoe’s does. “Bump” is their word, not mine. And I’m guessing a 20-dollar bump of caviar is smaller than my fingernail. Caviar is lavish. I’ve heard the sturgeons are raised in Waterford crystal tanks filled with decarbonated Perrier, listening to Philip Glass’s études.
I suppose a private club is a good business model. Zoe’s will get money up front and they’ll have the exclusivity every Hamptons visitor seeks. I don’t think Mr. Hockey and I are hip enough to get in. Mainly because I use the word “hip.” And “haunches.”
And if we could get in, I don’t think I’d want to join. Like Groucho Marx, I don’t want to be in a club that would have me as a member.
But I wish Zoe’s all the luck in the world. As I said, restauranteuring is a tough business and many fall by the wayside.
The hockey pucks and I still talk about a Thai place that used to be in the LT Burger space in Sag Harbor. The food was delicious, and all the wait staff were aspiring models. We couldn’t ask them for menu recommendations because they didn’t eat.
The pucks were little and when I’d accompany them to the bathroom, we’d spy the waiters making out in the hall. I don’t blame them. Those poor hot models were starving! Their only joy in life was a little snog. The service wasn’t great, but the mango sticky rice? To die for.
We have a new restaurant in East Hampton at The Hedges Inn called Swifty’s. The food is similar to Zoe’s, yet different: a yellowtail crudo, a watermelon panzanella, and a pork tomahawk. There are no prices online, but I assume it’s expensive. I’ve heard the pig was raised in a suite at the Carlyle Hotel, where it consumed caviar and Bombay Sapphire gin martinis, up, with olives, while being serenaded by Beyoncé singing old standards with the ghost of Bobby Short.
Swifty’s isn’t a private club, but it might as well be. They say you can reserve a table two weeks out. It’s not so easy. For fun, I check the table availability when I wake up, and it’s always booked. I imagine people in their beds at midnight, their faces aglow from their phones as their fingers hover over the Resy app.
The restaurant lives up to its name: you’ve gotta be swift to get in.
Or you gotta be Taylor Swift.
Who else is eating at Swifty’s? I know a woman who went as a guest of her famous friend. I assume the rich-but-not-famous have dining concierges who get them in. If you’re wondering, a dining concierge is paid a monthly or annual fee to obtain dinner reservations at hard-to-get restaurants.
They’re a real luxury. I’ve heard dining concierges are raised in lofts in the Meatpacking District consuming only lobster mac and cheese and over-carbonated Perrier while watching Cher do the Cha-Cha with her Chow Chow.
Mr. Hockey and I don’t have a dining concierge. We only have the Open Table and Resy apps, which we curse each time they send a six-digit code, because then we need our glasses. It’s a whole thing.
Perhaps we’ll get into Swifty’s in the fall, when the summer folks have left.
I know what I’ll be doing the morning after Labor Day.
Published in The East Hampton Press on July 24, 2025
Photo by ME!!!
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