In the Hamptons, revenge is best taken coldly.
SoHo upscale restaurant Sartiano’s opened its East Hampton location less than a month ago, but since opening it’s been subject to nearly daily raids by health inspectors and scrutiny by the city’s notorious noise enforcement police, The Washington Post has learned.
Last Saturday, witnesses said three police cars were called to the scene and officers entered the historic Hedges Inn restaurant “like a SWAT team.”
The commotion began with Sartiano’s colorful owner, Scott Sartiano, best known as the manager of the city’s celebrity hangout, Zero Bond, where Kim Kardashian and Leonardo DiCaprio have been seen hobnobbing with Elon Musk and Mayor Eric Adams.
Sartiano had hoped to turn the Hedges Inn into a private late-night hangout for A-listers this summer, but his plans were shot down by local officials, who passed an ordinance requiring all “eateries” in East Hampton Village to close by 11 p.m., except for the Hedges, which, due to some controversial legal precedent, must close by 10 p.m.
That’s it for the late night drinking spree.
The campaign to keep Zero Bond from disrupting their ideal haven has been spearheaded by East Hampton Mayor Jerry Larsen, a former police chief who celebrated his 2020 election victory at The Hedges, a luxury 13-room bed and breakfast founded in 1873.
Locals expected Sartiano to surrender.
Instead, he opened Sartiano’s in the Hedges in mid-July, The Washington Post reported exclusively.
Dinner is only served Thursday through Saturday, with the last reservation at 8pm. There is no bar, so you cannot enter the inn without a reservation.
Despite the concessions, Larsen appears still infuriated by the intrusion into his turf.
“This guy has a desire for revenge,” a source familiar with the matter claimed.
Observers say it’s akin to all-out war. Locals say village administrators have sent letters to neighbours urging them to call in noise complaints.
They added that police vehicles are lined up outside the Hedges Inn most nights as the harassment campaign continues.
In addition to noise complaints, sources said restaurants have been raided by inspectors while customers were eating, forcing wealthy patrons onto the side of the road.
The latest break-in happened last weekend, when the restaurant received a noise complaint even though music was louder at other nearby establishments, officials said.
“No one is standing up to the mayor who is enforcing the rules like this,” one of the people said.
Sartiano declined to comment on the tough reception he received.
“All I want to do is serve veal Parmigiano,” he told the Post.
Larsen did not answer the phone.
Not everyone is opposed to the East Hampton Village mayor.
“This is a small town,” says a nearby observer, “The people didn’t want zero bonds. Scott wanted to fight them, but Hampton is Hampton. You can’t win there. He pissed off a lot of people.”
One official praised Larsen as “business-friendly,” noting that East Hampton has attracted luxury stores such as Louis Vuitton since he took office as mayor in 2020.
Christopher Kelly, an attorney for John Cumming, one of the Hedges Inn’s owners, declined to comment.
We listen… Investor-turned-hotelier Mayank Dwivedi is currently co-owner of Southampton’s Capri, which he plans to transform into a luxury hotel by next summer as part of a joint venture with hotel owners Mark Geragos and Tina Grandian of Geragos Global. For now, the hotel has been renovated and a new restaurant, Ketchy Beach, an offshoot of the trendy SoHo hotspot Ketchy Shovey, has opened. The investment follows Dwivedi’s joint purchase of East Hampton’s Maidstone Hotel with entrepreneur Irwin Simon. Dwivedi is currently in negotiations to acquire a third hotel in Montauk. His plan is to have 100 hotel rooms in the Hamptons by the end of 2025.
He says there are no new hotel licenses in the Hamptons, so current licenses are extremely valuable. For example, the 19-room Maidstone is the largest hotel in East Hampton. When Jennifer Lopez recently hosted a party at her Hamptons home, she asked for one for her 40 guests.
“but, [almost] “There was nowhere else we could fit 50 guests at a time,” Dwivedi says. Some of her guests ended up staying at the Maidstone, others at the 30-room Capri. “The Hamptons is one of the top three postcodes in the world. It’s a place that will last forever,” Dwivedi says. “Irwin [Simon] They told us about the Hamptons, from Exit 70 to every town. We partnered up in Maidstone and thought we should do more. It’s such a limited, controlled market that there’s no way to meet the demand.”
