Where to Eat Near the Hampton Classic: A Bridgehampton Restaurant Minutes From the Grounds
Nourish by The Roundtree Staff
The Hampton Classic takes over Bridgehampton from August 23 to 30 this year, and by four in the afternoon a familiar thing happens on the grounds. The jumping is finished for the day, the tent has emptied out, and several thousand people who have been standing in the sun since morning start asking each other the same question.
Nobody wants to drive far to answer it.
Minutes From the Grounds
Nourish sits on the Bridgehampton–Sag Harbor Turnpike, a short drive from the show grounds — close enough that you can leave after the last round and be at a table before you have decided what you want.
That matters more during Classic week than it does the rest of the year. Traffic on Montauk Highway thickens in both directions, and the drive that is a matter of minutes in June takes considerably longer on Grand Prix Sunday. A restaurant you can reach without rejoining the main road is worth something.
What’s on the Table
Chef Dewa Wijaya cooks the way he learned to in two places at once. He was born in Bali and trained classically in the French style, and he came to Bridgehampton from COMO Shambhala Estate in Bali and COMO Parrot Cay in Turks & Caicos, where the brief was food that leaves you able to do something afterward.
That is the seam the menu sits on. There is butter and there is fire, and there is also a lightness that most late-August cooking in the Hamptons does not bother with. Late summer is when the kitchen has the least to do and does the least — the tomatoes come in from farms a few miles north, the corn is at its shortest window, and a plate that would need a sauce in April needs almost nothing now.
After a day in the sun, that is the right kind of dinner. You are not starting a second event; you are ending the first one well.
The Bar
Takuma Watanabe created the cocktail program. He is Tokyo-born and known for his work at Martiny’s, and the drinks list reads like someone who thinks about balance before he thinks about spectacle — which is, again, the correct instinct for a table of people who have been outdoors since nine in the morning.
There is a full non-alcoholic side to the list, built with the same attention rather than as an afterthought. On a week when a lot of people are driving back east afterward, that turns out to matter.
Reserving During Classic Week
Book ahead. Classic week fills the East End the way U.S. Open week does, and the tables that go first are the early evening ones — the six o’clock seatings that catch everyone coming straight off the grounds.
Reservations run through Resy, or by phone or text at (631) 600-8852. If your day runs long and you need a later table, say so when you book; the kitchen serves through the evening and a nine o’clock reservation during Classic week is often easier to get than a six.
