I asked him what he had for dinner, and he said he had what he always had, the hamburger steak laced with chopped onions and accompanied with a few complimentary servings of coleslaw. “I don’t like coleslaw. But they have great coleslaw,” Kiseda said.
Lest it seem that Big Nick’s and The Pantry are exactly alike, I should point out a few significant differences: Big Nick’s has a menu so large, so comprehensive, and so badly arranged that it is virtually impossible to understand. This is one reason why I stick to the burgers. The Pantry has no menu, just a few dozen items printed on the wall plus specials of the day scrawled on a blackboard in handwriting that’s nearly impossible to read.
The walls of The Pantry are basically bare. Big Nick’s walls are blanketed with all manner of stuff, primarily celebrity photos of people you’ve never heard of. My favorite is a glamour shot of Madonna—a gal named Madonna Chavez, that is. The tables at The Pantry are Formica and the chairs wood. The booths at Big Nick’s are constructed of plywood.
All this is pretty wonderful, but it has occurred to me that the people who run The Pantry and Big Nick’s might feel otherwise, harbor some long-repressed desire that their establishments be considered on a par with the restaurant elite. This seems not to be the case.
Big Nick, of course, named his place Big Nick’s Burger Joint when he opened it twenty-eight years ago, and he says, “How can it be anything else? There’s writing on the wall, crazy people are inside scream-ing, it’s narrow and not comfortable to have a meal, you see the smoke when you come in the door—excuse me, but we are making hamburgers up there, you cannot a hundred percent hide the smoke and the grease.” David Hixon, one of the waiters at The Pantry, though not F O R K I T O V E R
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for all of its seventy-one years, says, “It is a joint. I think a joint has a feeling of old-timeness, and a broad cross section of a clientele.” The phrase “broad cross section” rang an alarm with me, and he conceded that the customers who wander in aren’t always the most desirable, being that The Pantry is located “in the bowels of downtown L.A.” Indeed, joints do have a few drawbacks, but at a time when Americans claim to be coveting value, quality, and unpretentiousness, a joint fills every expectation, meets every requirement. Joints are exactly what we want, and they are exactly what they always were. To me, a good place to grab a meal need rise no higher than that.
Food & Wine, october 1995
H U N G R Y I N T H E H A M P T O N S
At 5:30 p.m. on a Friday in early May, I am seated at a table under the stiff blue awning that shades the deck of Bostwick’s Seafood Grill. I order the “sun-dried” pizza, anticipating that it will, at the very least, be fresh. I am this restaurant’s first customer. The first ever.
Before me, bobbing fetchingly in the Maidstone Marina, are six-figure sailboats owned by mariners who think “Land ho!” is something you cry out while closing a real estate deal. To the side, the Stars and Stripes snaps smartly in the cool, offshore breeze. My waitress, who could not be lovelier in shorts, T-shirt, and turquoise earrings, tells me she has just arrived in East Hampton, a village a hundred miles east of Manhattan, to begin a new life. It is something she has in common with Bostwick’s, which has had many other lives, many other names.
The manager stops by to ask if everything is all right.
“Perfect,” I reply, not exaggerating a bit.
And yet . . .
Somewhere, just over the horizon, economic thunderclouds gather.
This is no fault of Bostwick’s. On the contrary. In my travels through the Hamptons over the course of two long weekends, there aren’t many meals I enjoy more than this sun-dried tomato, pesto, and goat-cheese pizza served beside a harbor on a delightful spring day.
What darkens the promise of this and every other restaurant in the area is the location. The Hamptons, so sublimely beautiful in the 3 6
A L A N R I C H M A N
summer, so beloved by those possessing exquisite taste and excessive money, are a restaurant graveyard.
Last year, Bostwick’s was the Little Rock Yacht Club. Before that, it was the Sea Wolf and before that the Silver Sea Horse. Just outside the village of East Hampton is Jackstraw’s Cafe, which is preparing for its grand opening. It is situated in a lovely old shingled house that once was the Spring Close House (for fine family dining) and then the Beach Plum (for downscale beach fare) and then the Ballpark (for “people with fishhooks in their cheeks,” I’m told), and then Violet’s (for elegant evenings out). Now, as Jackstraw’s Cafe, it will feature Southwestern cuisine. The decor is sort of New Mexican Gothic, a combination of old gilded art left over from Violet’s and new serapes brought in for Jackstraw’s. It’s how Dracula would decorate if he moved to Sante Fe.
When winter arrives in the Hamptons, eating establishments vanish like beach umbrellas in a hurricane. “In the off-season, business stops like a heart attack,” says Robert Durkin, chef and co-owner of Karen Lee’s, in Bridgehampton.
Despite that, the Hamptons have become one of the hottest restaurant regions in the country. Restaurateurs, many with successful establishments in Manhattan, are flocking here, so many that they deserve group rates on the Hampton Jitney. They are encouraged by a prevailing sense of economic optimism and a belief that their best customers—
wealthy Manhattanites with summer homes—are eagerly awaiting the arrival
