http://archive.today/2025.07.04-101354/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/nyregion/hamptons-grocery-prices.html
It wasn’t even 8:30 on a recent morning when a shopper emptied his basket of dinner ingredients onto the counter of the Farm & Forage Market in Southampton: two king crab legs, two bags of frozen dumplings, two packages of ramen noodles and a bag of dried sea kelp.
The cash register rang up an already eye-popping tally before the customer realized he had forgotten the caviar. He tossed a jar of it onto the counter. The grand total was $1,860.
“I’ll put that on your tab, right?” asked Jonathan Bernard, owner of the tiny, tidy store. The shopper, a private chef who works in a home nearby, nodded and noted he would be back later for truffles.
This summer, an arms race among gourmet groceries has emerged with new specialty stores opening and longtime favorites expanding or adding new items — along with new, higher prices — to their shelves. Some of the big-ticket items top even the Hamptons’ much maligned $100-a-pound lobster salad, that debuted several years ago.
A top competitor is the specialty musk melon on offer at Farm & Forage. Imported from Japan, it is sprung from tenderly cared-for vines. It sells for as much as $400. (To the undiscerning eye, it looks identical to a regular, grocery store cantaloupe.)
Bethenny Frankel, the former reality TV star and entrepreneur, dropped into Farm & Forage recently and sampled the fancy fare, posting on Instagram that “we have a situation going on in the Hamptons — savage gourmet market wars.”
“This eggplant caponata makes me want to do naughty things in my own home,” she said in another post as she held a fork-full of the $15 dish to her mouth.
The video is titled “Round Swamp Who?” — a reference to a different gourmet grocery, Round Swamp Farm, whose outlet in Bridgehampton during lunchtime last week was swarmed by shoppers digging into the grab-and-go bonanza of prepared meals stacked six-deep in large store coolers. Popular items were $17.50 containers of curry chicken salad; $30.21 Mexican street corn sprout salad and $22 chicken fingers with $15 chipotle mayonnaise dip.
At the Loaves & Fishes Foodstore in Sagaponack, home of the $100-a-pound lobster salad, the shelves are lined with chunky halibut fish salad, perfect deviled eggs, 36 different sauces, glistening plum tarts, cappuccino crunch cold brew coffee with homemade salted toffee and hot fudge ice cream, mousses, jams, marmalades and jars of specialty veal baby food.
Just down the street, the Sagaponack General Store is making a splash after its long-awaited reopening in May following a multiyear, multimillion-dollar renovation.
Mindy Gray, wife of Jonathan Gray, the billionaire president of the investment firm Blackstone, said she bought the store, which got its start selling sundries to farmers in the late 1800s, when it came up for sale during the Covid pandemic.
Shoppers lounged on the front porch, dogs perched at their feet; others perused the $16.95 cartons of pale pink oyster mushrooms and the $8 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Some sat on benches in the backyard near a parking lot lined with beige and white gravel so clean it looked like each nugget had been hand wiped.
“I’m very impressed with what she’s done, but she has a lot of resources and can put out a very fancy neighborhood-like product,” said Tony Schlesinger, a retired lawyer from Brooklyn who spends much of the summer in the Hamptons.
