Huge news: The seasonal stop sign in front of Sunset Beach has been removed for the season. No more Influencer Crosswalk™. But while that normally means the woven bistro chairs are packed up until Memorial Day, the hotel is staying put for a while longer this year. September is wedding season, and a Jitney dropped wedding guests at the hotel this week. The hotel has also rented rooms to some of the Netflix crew in town to shoot “Women Like Us” with Whoopi Goldberg. Not to brag, but I have been cast as an “upscale hotel guest” in the film.
In today’s (free) newsletter, LDV’s John Meadow discusses the challenges of year-round hospitality in the Hamptons—and his Montauk restaurant Barlume Beach’s fracas with the town. He also shares the eye-popping amount he spent on staff housing this year. Plus: a Pucci thief strikes Kirna Zabête, updates on the Bridgehampton Target, invasive spotted lanternflies hit the North Fork vineyards, and the dubious awards for the most expensive kids’ menus.
Tomorrow is International Coastal Cleanup Day, and Suffolk County goes hard on beach activations. I’ll be breaking out my trash claw, inspired by David Sedaris. Then, I hope to see some of you at The Bridge’s annual elite car show, where I’ll be watching the people watching the cars. Come say hi; I’ll be the one talking to the valet.
What Everyone’s Talking About (Aside from ‘The Disappearers’ being sold out at all the East End bookshops thanks to that Times review)
While waiting for the Jitney on 41st Street, a giant bug landed on my arm, causing me to drop my phone. When it spread its wings to reveal a bright scarlet body, I shrieked. At home, my ten-year-old filled me in: It was an invasive spotted lanternfly. They don’t bite but they do damage crops. The pesky bugs are spreading east. My daughter’s school is in the thick of the North Fork vineyards, and concern is growing among winemakers.
The Hamptons-ification of the Bridgehampton Target, opening October 11, is in full swing. I popped by to check it out this week, and workers were busy setting up inside. The facade is a Nancy Meyers-y version of a typical Target, with white Adirondack chairs, white signage, and white lamps above the logo. Southampton Town nixed the chain’s typical illuminated red signs. Hampton Hopper buses are advertising job openings.
Sheldon the Shell Car, a Smart Car plastered with thousands of shells hand-collected by Elena Hahn, made a stop at the Ram’s Head Inn this week. Sheldon made more friends on Ram Island than Russell Brand.
La Dolce Larceny
Looks like an East Hampton thief was planning a Hot-Girl Italian Summer. At the end of August, the designer boutique Kirna Zabête reported an ongoing theft of several pieces totaling over $40,000. The store reported to police that a member of its cleaning crew was allegedly caught on camera nabbing pieces from the inventory room since early August. The haul included bathing suits, plus $1390 LaDoubleJ dresses, $695 Pucci shorts, and $4700 Bottega Veneta purses—all the makings of a Positano vacation wardrobe.
“I’m just trying to sell beautiful things to women — I’m not trying to be a ‘Law & Order’ episode over here,” said the store’s owner Beth Buccini when reached by phone. She said the store is pressing charges to the full extent of the law.
The Spaghetti King’s Hamptons Philosophy
John Meadow, the CEO of LDV Hospitality, has been coming to the Hamptons since renting share houses in his 20s. Now a family man with a house in the North Sea area, and a sprawling hospitality empire that includes properties in Miami, London, Las Vegas, and Doha, he runs LDV at the Maidstone Hotel in East Hampton and Barlume Beach in Montauk. He learned the Hamptons market while operating a Montauk branch of his flagship restaurant, Scarpetta, at Gurney’s resort for ten years. Barlume opened with a bang this year at the site of the former Rick's Crabby Cowboy Cafe (which burned down in 2023), with influencers arriving by Blade to drink rosé champagne on the beach. In late July, East Hampton Town sued the establishment over capacity issues and permitting. Meadow, undaunted, shares his philosophy for Hamptons hospitality.
I remember that almost 20 years ago, Kirsten Dunst said her favorite food was pasta pomodoro from your restaurant Scarpetta. It made me want to try it back then.
We built our whole business around that dish. Eighteen years later, we give away a dollar from every portion sold to The Food Education Fund, a New York City culinary education charity whose board I sit on. So spaghetti is very dear to our story, and to our hearts.
LDV at the Maidstone is open year-round. What’s it like running a business in East Hampton in the off-season?
Bluntly, it stops. From May through the end of the year there’s real business: New Yorkers, second-home owners, locals, and the weekends are active. January, February, and March, when it’s dark at 4 p.m., are a different vibe. We still do business every weekend with reduced hours. The place is cozy, with two fireplaces and a natural funk that feels inviting. By being there for the local community, we’re making a statement that this is not New York City invading the Hamptons in the summertime.
I know there will always be tension between the city, second-home owners, and locals in communities like this. But when I look back on my life, the best moments will be laughing with my daughters over ice cream at Big Olaf, or going to Sagg Main Beach. I want to be part of that community, and the Maidstone lets us do that in a personal, intimate way.
Tell me about opening Barlume Beach this summer.
The Maidstone is about the Maidstone. Barlume is our Italian form of culinary and hospitality, and it’s the protagonist. The site burned down in a fire three years ago, so we got to create something from scratch, a phoenix rising from the ashes. What we created is a European beach club experience. Sunset Beach has done that sensibility beautifully for 30 years, and we’re in the same ilk. It’s a fun, social summer day or night out, maybe with too much rosé. It’s not a nightclub and it’s not chaotic. You can pull up on your boat, watch the sunset, and have an Aperol spritz or an espresso martini.
Where does the name come from?
Barlume means a flickering glimmer of light in Italian. Imagine you’re in a New York City apartment looking across the street and you see a party, people sashaying, shadows flickering. That’s the barlume, that vibe over there. Guests call it “Bar Loom,” and it kills me, but over time we’ll get there.
East Hampton Town sued Barlume over capacity and seating. Where does that stand?
I don’t want to put my foot in my mouth. The professionals have been working through the issues with the town, and I’m very confident we’re near resolution. There was a lot of drama, excitement, and hearsay. There were minor infractions, no formidable violations, and I’m very comfortable with where things are. Above all else, I know my integrity is absolutely in check.
Bluntly, when we said “beach club,” a lot of people thought we were opening a daytime nightclub. It’s not. It’s a restaurant, with a DJ some nights. The neighbors I know were reticent at first. By the end of the summer, they were becoming regulars.
I sat at the bar without a reservation this summer, and noticed how well-trained the staff was.
Thank you for recognizing that. If I’m proud of any single thing in my career, which occupies about 90 percent of my existence apart from my kids, it’s our people. We have wonderful, loyal people. I’m not a subscriber to the next concept or the next TikTok trend, hot today and gone tomorrow.
When we say la dolce vita, the good life, we don’t mean the fancy life or the elite life, and definitely not the TikTok life. We mean genuine, warm hospitality, and only the line-level staff can create and sustain that. A restaurant is an inverted pyramid. I started the company, and I’m the least important person in it. The server, the bartender, the runner who can describe the bread: that’s the restaurant. I don’t care how good our spaghetti tomato basil is. No one goes out for pasta. We can all make pasta. You go out for human engagement, something tangible and palpable.
Staff housing comes up constantly in my reporting. How are you housing staff in Montauk and East Hampton?
Between the two businesses, we spent $950,000 on staff housing this year.
That’s a lot of money.
It’s a completely different business model. Ultimately it comes down to math. I firmly believe it would be in every township’s best interest to work toward a logical staff-housing solution, like a public-private partnership. The best idea I’ve ever heard was to buy an old cruise ship and anchor it offshore. I drive an hour and 15 minutes from my house to the beach, so a 30-minute tender ride is nothing. It would obviously never get permitted, but the staff housing crisis is real, and it needs a public, private, and communal effort.
A staff-housing cruise ship sounds like a great reality show.
One year we took over the Memory Motel in Montauk for our staff. I signed the lease but never walked through it. When I asked our director of operations how it was, he said, “You don’t ever want to go in there. You don’t want to see it. But they don’t want to leave.” My wife is obsessed with “Below Deck” and its staff dynamics. A lot of it is adult summer camp.
Beyond housing, what other challenges have you learned about running restaurants out here?
Seasonality is the biggest one by far. We don’t make money at the Maidstone in the winter; we run at a loss. I can understand a private equity firm saying the better math is to shut down and send the staff away. But there’s damage when you have to reopen every year, which is what happens in Montauk. You’re retraining. You’re not starting from zero, but you’re not a mature, ongoing business either. Volume can also swing wildly week to week, which is jostling.
The key is employee retention, having people who’ve done it before. We’re fortunate there. We operate in nine cities and five countries, including Miami, and there’s seasonality everywhere, so we can pull team members from other operations who want that adult summer camp.
What have you learned about what Hamptons guests want?
The markets are very different. East Hampton is a real community, and the Maidstone is a community anchor. It almost feels like a country club, with a lot of regulars and standing tables. It’s part of their summer ritual, and what they want is comfort, to be taken care of, and consistency. The Maidstone maxes out around 250 people, so it’s a small environment that’s full the whole time.
Montauk is higher energy. We can do four times the volume there, and with more capacity we could do ten times. We turn away more business than we can take. Montauk is pretty young things who want to be in the mix. It’s more of a vibe, more social. It’s a restaurant with a vibe, which is very different from a day party. But there’s a bit of a scene, and we play into it. That’s part of dining out in Montauk.
You have a place in North Sea. Do you have hopes of opening elsewhere on the East End?
I keep my personal and professional lives separate. I live on the Upper West Side, in the same building as my in-laws, and my mother-in-law always asks why I don’t open there. I tell her I will never open a restaurant where I live. You need some dissonance for the sake of sanity. Out here, my favorite restaurant is Bell & Anchor, and I get takeout from Pellegrino’s. I live right between the two. Those are sweet, sincere, locally run joints, and that’s what I want for my family.
That said, Sag Harbor is absolutely where I’d like to open a restaurant. It’s a fantastic year-round community of real people who appreciate authenticity and sincerity, plus enough summer action to make the math work.
Well, The Corner Bar in Sag Harbor is open now.
The Corner is open…Good spot. Great spot.
*This interview was edited for length and clarity.
And to close, a chart from our August print issue tracking the most expensive kids’ meals out east. If you’ve seen other egregious examples, drop ‘em in the comments:
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