The Bougie Farm Stands and Markets Of The Hamptons, Explained
“I’ll get this,” I tell her at checkout. “I’m so grateful that you invited me out there this weekend.”
“That’ll be $382 dollars,” says the cashier.
“It’ll be what?”
Anyway, that’s my story about how I went on the world’s most expensive supermarket sweep.
Round Swamp Farms is a fourth-generation, family-owned farm that’s grown into a mini empire: they’ve got three stores in a 20-mile radius, offering produce fresh off their fields (where are they? no clue!), gourmet prepared foods, as well as baked goods so twee and homespun you think that, in addition to those fields, they also have a sweatshop of grandmas chained to a radiator somewhere. Is everything you buy priced at a level that would make your accountant fall to their knees and weep? Yes. Is it amazing? Also yes. Two truths can exist at once.
The Status Item: chicken salad, chicken fingers, and those muffins
The Celebrity Fan: Justin and Hailey Bieber
Sagaponack General Store
Clears throat, adapts Stefan from Saturday Night Live voice: “The Hamptons hottest grocer is… the Sagaponack General Store. It’s got everything. Cinnamon rolls. Willoughby cheese washed with dry rosé cider. Buttermilk Biscuit Bite flavored fro-yo. Penny candy. Also, baby clothes.”
After a four-year closure and rumored $12 million renovation, the Sagaponack General Store re-opened this May under proprietor (and billionaire) Mindy Gray. It’s since become the place to get coffee if you want to be seen getting coffee. Or, to post the act of getting coffee to TikTok or Instagram—the whole cream and wood space looks like something straight out of a Nancy Meyers film.
Full disclosure: I haven’t been, because the line is insane and I simply refuse to wait in it! So here’s a dispatch from my Hamptons friend who is a regular: “It’s a very beautiful space,” she says. “Although they raised the price of a chicken salad sandwich from $14 to $17 two weeks ago.”
The Status Item: Cinnamon roll, rotisserie chicken, the fro-yo
The Celebrity Fan: Someone wait in that line and tell me…
Carissa’s The Bakery
Carissa’s has some street cred that goes further than Further Lane: this year, it was a James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Bakery. In 2020, it won for best restaurant design. Don’t come here to grocery shop, but do come for the best baked goods in the Hamptons. (Pro tip: if you are staying with someone, swing by there in the morning to pick up a box of pastries for your host. Gold star guest behavior.) Warning: You will inevitably wait in an interminable line behind a TikToker.
