After I informed a good friend I used to be going to take a look at Jamagansett over Memorial Day weekend, he thought it was a music pageant. “Rock on!” he stated — generously, given my straw basket bag and clogs. The truth was tamer: It’s a twee Hamptons store that opened within the just-so village of Amagansett promoting three $80 pies a weekend.
That value and amount are set by Lena Kristy, who, after the San Francisco Cooking Faculty and an M.B.A. program at Columbia, labored on shopper manufacturers as a advisor at McKinsey. She left two years in the past to begin Jamagansett, a “luxurious jam model” that makes $25 nine-ounce jars of low-sugar preserves, usually utilizing Lengthy Island fruit harvested throughout peak season. Kristy, who was raised in Marin County, California, bears a passing resemblance to Allison Williams, and if she had been on Ladies, she’d be Marnie: sort A, wide-eyed, centered.
“Our imaginative and prescient is to grow to be a family identify,” says Kristy, who has a silent companion. On opening day, she buzzed round her cottagecore-coded retailer down the road from The Row as a stream of buyers got here in from the rain for jam samples and to attempt to seize one of many limited-edition salty blueberry pies. Two had been already gone.
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In a area the place entertaining could be a blood sport, bringing a coveted dessert to your host is de rigueur, and every conveys its personal delicate message: Briermere Farms’ cultish $45 strawberry cream pies are the insider’s decide (and imply you — or your home supervisor — trekked to Riverhead). Carissa’s $60 flourless chocolate truffles sign style and a sensitivity to gluten-free company. Spherical Swamp’s $44 apple pies are the country, earthy choice.
“You go to somebody’s home, you deliver a pie,” says Lori Chemla, co-owner of Carissa’s. Chemla, who has opened three places in East Hampton and Sag Harbor since teaming up with Carissa Waechter in 2017, remembers a time when it was customary for associates to deliver selfmade pies to informal seashore potlucks or decide them up from farmstands. The shift towards extra extravagant hostess presents and away from the kitchen has been a boon for Carissa’s in addition to Sagaponack Normal Retailer, reopened final 12 months by Mindy Grey, the spouse of Blackstone CEO Jonathan Grey. “What’s extra American than apple pie?” she says, carrying a ticking-stripe apron. Hers promote for about $45.
Within the land of brief seasonal promoting intervals, excessive labor prices, and rising provide prices, this all-American custom comes at a value. Chemla says baking requires costly gear and educated cooks. She and Waechter, who was skilled at Daniel, even have a French baker and different profession bakers on employees. And maintaining a baked-goods enterprise alive within the South Fork year-round inevitably means taking losses within the winter. “It’s a really explicit seasonal specialised world that we stay in,” Chemla says.
Kristy attributes the price of her jams and pies, that are baked in a Southampton commissary kitchen, to the expense of doing enterprise out East. And he or she acknowledges it was a strategic alternative. “We’re protecting our prices but in addition pricing them inside the market to sign what sort of name we’re constructing,” she says. The signal exterior the store on Primary Road may as effectively learn WE ARE NOT SMUCKER’S. Her nine-inch, $80 pie really used to price $100. That was earlier than Kristy heard quips comparable to “I’m going to should get a second job to afford this pie” from persnickety prospects who in all probability haven’t wanted to work second shifts since junior excessive. She says she continues to be testing value and provide and should add extra. Up to now, the pies have been bought on a primary come, first served foundation.
Picture: Hugo Yu
One of many prospects who sprang for the salty blueberry pie was Licia Householder, who spent years because the pastry chef at Sagaponack’s Loaves & Fishes. Now a personal chef identified for customized truffles, she received sticker shock again when it was $100: “It’s just a little ridiculous, to be sincere.” Whereas she discovered it scrumptious, an outline associates of mine vouched for, she hasn’t purchased one other one.
One other rookie within the Hamptons baked-goods Thunderdome is Sag Harbor’s Gone Bananas Bread, the brainchild of Los Angeles stylist and inside designer Estee Stanley. A good friend of Justin Timberlake’s who was with him on the night time of his Sag Harbor martini bust, she has lengthy had a summer time house in Sagaponack. She first made banana bread in her kitchen throughout COVID’s early lockdowns to profit the charity Baby2Baby and has gone on to open viral pop-ups on the Unique Farmers Market and a retailer subsequent to Brentwood Nation Mart in L.A.
“It’s luxurious banana bread — it’s Gucci,” says Stanley, whose loaves are priced from $40 to $60. “We’re in areas the place folks spend cash. Like Brentwood, no one actually cares. Hopefully in Sag Harbor no one actually cares. Meals substances, lease, staff — all of it provides up. It’s not like we’re printing cash and have hit the jackpot.”
Sam Pezzullo, a Sag Harbor filmmaker and the maître d’ at Tutto Il Giorno restaurant, is over what he calls “designer desserts.” He plops a $4 Hahn’s Previous-Normal Cake Firm crumb cake in entrance of me, singing its praises: “It’s only a good product.” He thinks truffles and pies are so standard on the East Finish partially due to the idealization of the last word rom-com occupation: working a bakery.
“All people out right here needs to be Kristen Wiig in Bridesmaids,” says Pezzullo. Or the girl dwelling out a real-life romantic comedy and enterprise fantasy in East Hampton: Ina Garten. Her memoir, Be Prepared When the Luck Occurs, tells the story of her hapless bootstrapping rise. Her frozen-yogurt machine wreaks havoc; she sweats within the kitchen to churn out brownies. Kristy too talks about schlepping rhubarb from farms and testing jams in her kitchen. However her enterprise background and funding cushion imply she will launch collaborations with influencer Seth Boylan and run Instagram advertising campaigns out of the gate.
For these bored with standing desserts, there’s all the time the old style method — bake it your self. However private chef Robyn Henderson-Diederiks gives a phrase of warning. The pies she makes for her purchasers utilizing native farm-stand produce and good-quality flour and butter can price as much as $120 in substances alone, and that’s earlier than her charge kicks in. Including up her buying checklist, she says, “It is likely to be cheaper to purchase the $80 pie.”
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If you happen to desire to learn in print, you may also discover this text within the June 22, 2026, subject of
New York Journal.
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If you happen to desire to learn in print, you may also discover this text within the June 22, 2026, subject of
New York Journal.