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Before the Barefoot Contessa name was recognizable on television, in publishing and on store shelves, it was a locally known and much admired food store on Newtown Lane in East Hampton. When we recently asked proprietor Ina Garten if her store was the matriarch of gourmet takeout on the East End, she pointed to an older lineage. "We all descended from Bert Greene at The Store in Amagansett,” she said. “From him we learned to buy good local ingredients and cook them the way you would at home. It's fresh and simple—so you can entertain without turning on the stove."
Planning for the summer of 2012, we look at three of those culinary descendants who keep life delicious in the Hamptons. The newest contender, just opening in Sag Harbor is Pepalajefa, a food shop with a modern slant on European classics. Mary’s Marvelous, the gastronome go-to spot in Amagansett, is celebrating its tenth anniversary by opening a new takeout and packaged food shop in East Hampton. And Loaves and Fishes, in Sagaponack, a contemporary of the original Barefoot Contessa, continues to thrive while producing traditional Hamptons favorites such as chicken pot pie as well as imaginative new offerings like an original barbequed brisket.
“We make everything fresh, every day,” says Anna Pump, the culinary savant behind Loaves and Fishes. “We start with the best raw materials I can find, plain and natural ingredients.” The resulting dishes can be quite inspired and luxurious—but they still manage to reflect the innate virtues of their superb ingredients. Pump’s tastes include the sumptuous: lobster and caviar and fresh tuna salads, but she also loves more homey dishes like quinoa with chick peas—use lots of lemon with quinoa, she comments—couscous or gigante beans.
Some members of the Loaves and Fishes staff have been with Pump for decades and the mastery shows when you scan the counter. With thirty-two years of experience at Loaves and Fishes, Pump seems the very soul of confidence and savoir-faire.
Swiss restaurateur and epicurean entrepreneur Livia Hegner is reaching across the Alps and Atlantic to open Pepalajefa, a shop with a European disposition. Or as she puts it, “foods going back to their roots, but with contemporary flair or a little kick. The spirit is classic European, my approach is fun and fresh.”
Hegner is a seasoned traveler and a worldly sort who has been visiting the Hamptons for years and realized how much our lives might be enhanced by a good rösti, one of those humble, elusive and irresistible potato dishes that can soar to culinary heights in the hands of the right chef. Hegner’s food philosophy of using familiar ingredients in different ways will no doubt take plenty of skill, and the proof, as they say, will be in the pudding, or in this case an updated, still upside down bistro favorite, tarte tatin.
When Mary Schoenlein, the proprietor of Mary’s Marvelous, describes seeing her first professional kitchen you can practically see the thunderbolt above her head. After training upstate and then working in prominent New York restaurant kitchens, she realized a dream by opening her small Amagansett shop ten years ago. The response in the community was immediate and enthusiastic. Everybody, it seems, loves Mary’s Marvelous, and she has gradually expanded the base from morning pastry and coffee to sandwiches and “grab and go” lunch and dinner dishes like apricot ginger chicken or South American style arepas.
Schoenlein works in the kitchen and on the floor—the food business is decidedly hard work—and when her hands aren’t busy, she focuses on growing the business. She is in the process of opening a second shop, this one on Newtown Lane in East Hampton, where, with more space and a juice bar, she is increasing the selection. “Bigger,” she says, “is by itself not better.” So she will keep the focus on the quality and originality for which she is known.
All three shops use local produce in season. Many vegetable ingredients at Loaves and Fishes originate down Sag Main Street at Jim Pike’s farm. Schoenlein contracts with two local farms, and Hegner intends to source locally. If you’re looking for a vegetable trend this summer the nominee is that nutrition packed marvel…kale! Schoenlein will have kale salads and Pump plans several side dishes including a Scandinavian influenced kale, leek and potato puree.
[Sidebar]
Takeout. Then Take Where?
From Mary’s Marvelous in Amagansett. Try the picnic tables in a wooded grove at Albert’s Landing, then walk south along a quiet beach on Napeague Bay to Little Albert’s Landing, where Fresh Pond flows into the bay.
From Loaves and Fishes. Grab a blanket and head south to the Peter’s Pond beach in Sagaponack for a quintessential Hamptons experience, past the farms and dunes and inland ponds to a perfect sandy ocean beach.
From Pepalajefa in Sag Harbor: For the same spectacular views you’d have if your yacht were docked near the Long Wharf, stroll to Marine Park. From a waterfront bench you’ll overlook the harbor, the marinas and sailboats, and across the bay, Shelter Island.