In the Hamptons, revenge is a dish best served cold.
Sartiano’s, the swishy Soho restaurant, has been operating an outpost in East Hampton for less than a month — yet it has been raided by health inspectors or targeted by the town’s notorious noise police nearly every day it has been open, The Post has learned.
Last Saturday, three police cars were sent and cops entered the restaurant at the historic Hedges Inn “like a SWAT team,” an eyewitness said.
The imbroglio stems from Sartiano’s colorful owner, Scott Sartiano, more famously known as the keeper of city celeb-magnet Zero Bond, where Kim Kardashian and Leo DiCaprio can be spotted rubbing elbows with Elon Musk and Mayor Eric Adams.
Sartiano wanted to bring the exclusive and private late-night hangout for A-lister to the Hedges Inn this summer, but his plan was shot down by local officials who passed an ordinance that all “eating and drinking establishments” in East Hampton Village must close by 11 p.m. — except for the Hedges, which has to shut by 10 p.m. thanks to a somewhat disputed past precedent.
So much for late-night carousing.
The campaign to keep Zero Bond from disturbing their idyllic haven was spearheaded by East Hampton’s Mayor Jerry Larsen, a former police chief who celebrated his election victory in 2020 at the Hedges — a 13-room, luxury bed and breakfast that dates to 1873.
Locals expected Sartiano to fold.
Instead, he opened Sartiano’s at the Hedges in mid-July, as The Post reported exclusively.
It serves dinner just Thursdays to Saturdays, and the last reservation is 8 p.m. There is no bar scene, so if you don’t have a reservation, you’re not allowed inside the inn.
Despite the concessions, Larsen apparently remains furious over the encroachment on his turf.
“This guy has a vendetta,” a source close to the situation alleged.
It’s more like all out-war, observers say. A letter from the village administration has been sent to neighbors urging them to call in noise complaints, according to locals.
Police cars are lined up outside the Hedges Inn most nights in an ongoing harassment campaign, they add.
In addition to being cited for noise complaints, sources said the restaurant has been raided by inspectors while guests are dining, forcing the well-heeled customers out on the curb.
The latest incursion occurred last weekend, when the restaurant was hit with a noise complaint — even though music was louder at other nearby places, sources said.
“Nobody wants to stand up to the mayor who is doing this forced code enforcement,” one of the sources said.
Sartiano has declined to comment on the difficult welcome he has received.
“All I want to do is serve veal parmagiano,” he told The Post.
Larsen did not return calls.
Not everyone is against the East Hampton Village mayor.
“It’s a small town,” a close observer said. “The residents didn’t want Zero Bond. Scott wanted to take them on. But the Hamptons are the Hamptons. You can’t win out there. He pissed a lot of people off.”
One insider praised Larsen as being “business friendly,” noting that East Hampton is now home to luxury stores like Louis Vuitton since he became mayor in 2020.
Christopher Kelley, the lawyer for one of the Hedges Inn owners, John Cumming, declined comment.
We hear… that financier turned hotelier Mayank Dwivedi is now a co-owner of the Capri in Southampton as part of a joint venture with the Capri’s owners, celeb attorneys Mark Geragos and Tina Glandian of Geragos Global, and plans to transform it into a luxury hotel by next summer. For now, it’s been upgraded and has a new eatery, Ketchy Beach, that’s an outpost of the chic Soho hotspot, Ketchy Shuby. The investment follows Dwivedi’s move to co-buy the Maidstone hotel in East Hampton with entrepreneur Irwin Simon. Dwivedi is now negotiating to buy a third hotel in Montauk. His plan is to have 100 Hamptons hotel rooms by the end of 2025.
There are no new hotel licenses in the Hamptons, so the current ones are extremely valuable, he says. For example, he says, the Maidstone, which has 19 rooms, is the largest hotel in East Hampton. When Jennifer Lopez had a party at her Hamptons house recently, she wanted one hotel for 40 of her guests.
“But there’s [almost] nowhere to accommodate 50 guests at a time,” Dwivedi said. Some of her guests ended up staying at the Maidstone, while others stayed at the Capri, which has 30 rooms. “The Hamptons is one of the top three zip codes in the world. It’s forever,” Dwivedi said. “Irwin [Simon] taught me about the Hamptons, from Exit 70 through all the towns. We partnered on the Maidstone, and I thought, why not do more? It’s such a limited, controlled market and there is no way to accommodate the demand.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
