The Restaurant
Almond opened on Ocean Road in Bridgehampton on April 15, 2001, and quietly turned 25 in spring 2026 — a generational rarity in a Hamptons restaurant scene where dining rooms more typically last five seasons. Chef-owner Jason Weiner and his partner Eric Lemonides built the room as the bistro the Hamptons did not have: a long bar, banquettes on either side, a French country-tavern instinct that has resisted every successive wave of Hamptons fashion. The room sits about ninety covers across two linked spaces and a back garden that opens in summer.
The menu reads as updated French-bistro with serious market discipline: oysters from local Peconic Bay growers, a moules-frites that has held its menu position for twenty-five years, steak frites with truffle butter, branzino with capers and lemon, a roast chicken for two with bread salad and pan jus. Weiner is famously open about sourcing — most produce travels under thirty miles, the fish comes off Montauk and Greenport day boats, and the wine list is meaningfully Long Island-forward without being parochial about it. Almond's cocktail program is straightforward, well-poured, and reasonably priced — a refreshing position in a regional market that tends toward $24 cocktails.
The bar is the structural attraction. Weiner's commitment to a generous walk-in bar policy, even on the busiest Saturday in July, has made Almond's bar the East End's most reliable improvised dinner — a four-stool wait, a glass of Sancerre, the steak frites, and a conversation that runs the length of the room. Locals and weekenders mix at the bar in a way they do almost nowhere else in the Hamptons, and that mixing is what has kept the room recognisably itself for a quarter-century.
Why This Is The Hamptons’s First Date Pick
For a Hamptons first date, Almond is the calibrated choice. The bistro register reads as relaxed without being casual; the room is busy enough to provide conversation cover but quiet enough for actual talk; the bar provides a natural pre-dinner drink that can be extended if the date is going well or excused if it is not. The cooking is generous without being intimidating, the pricing lands in the $$$ band that signals care without performance, and the bar's no-reservation policy means the evening can find its own pace. For a first date that wants to feel like the Hamptons without trying to perform the Hamptons, this is the answer.
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