Like Tojo's planes, his new eatery snuck in when our guard was down, after Memorial Day when the foodies were out to sea. It isn't popular to root against Jerry Della Femina, whose 1994 arrest for displaying pumpkins outside his Red Horse Market is equated by locals with Martin Luther King's Birmingham incarceration. But you almost want this venture to flop, to quell any extraterritorial ambitions of the rest of the Hamptons culinary cartel. And your first glance promises a fiasco. The new place looks more like a Hamptons restaurant than actual ones, fresh as a beach house with pastel walls and wood ceiling.
Mullioned windows invite a peek through lace curtains at what's left of the potato fields.
But the news is bitter. Della Femina did not earn his reputation as a marketing wizard just by writing books. Tables are adequately spaced. And, after a few early fumbles, the kitchen is turning out the brand of vividly-presented New American cooking you find from The Tonic to the Lenox Room. But he's sharp and smart, and lunch is alarmingly delicious.