HEAVEN ELEVEN
During renovations, the 11 Madison Park gang is summering in the Hamptons
MOIST, all-American fried chicken. Picnic-table lobster boils. High-proof slushies for grown-ups, and swings and games for kids.
Those are a few of the easy pleasures of East Hampton’s EMP Summer House, a rare fusion of gastronomy and inspired whimsy that will last only as long as it takes to redesign its Manhattan mother ship, the three-Michelinstarred Eleven Madison Park.
Although unlike its eponymous parent, EMP is a restaurant the likes of which the Hamptons have never seen — and won’t likely see again. To East Enders inured to erratic cooking and laughriot service, it represents the most welcome humanitarian food-relief effort since the Berlin Airlift.
Unlike many South Fork places where the general manager’s last gig was mowing lawns, owner Will Guidara and chef-owner Daniel Humm Jitney-lifted 100-odd staffers from Eleven Madison Park,
which is closed until fall.
The move was needed to keep their highly trained team happy and paid during that four-month hiatus, Guidara says.
“At first, we were looking at a series of international popups, but then we decided the answer was right here in our backyard,” he says. “We’d do what New Yorkers do — go east for the summer.”
But it was a longer, more arduous journey than a fourhour schlep on the LIE.
“We’ve been working on it since March of 2016,” Guidara says of the search for a suitable location and temporary homes for the staff.
So where are they all staying? “We rented a lot of houses,” Humm says, with a laugh.
EMP is “a place where we would want to come to ourselves,” says Guidara — a line echoed with New England Patriots-like team discipline by many staffers, including Leo Robitschek, its floorroving bar director.
Robitschek — who’s on loan from Guidara and Humm’s less pricey Eleven Madison Park spinoff, the NoMad — has his own fan base. Among them is Williamsburg resident Nicole Douillet, a former banker who’s launching her own online investment-advisory firm, and her wife, Liana.
“We had our first date at Eleven Madison Park,” Nicole says. “Leo [an ordained minister] became one of our best friends. He actually married us in 2013.”
Another regular customer is Jonathan Zambetti, an owner of the City Club Hotel on West 44th Street. He says his 3-year-old son, Marco, calls Robitschek his uncle: “He’ll say, ‘Let’s go to uncle.’ ”
Nursing a drink at the bar, Zambetti says, “We can be adults and not worry about him having fun out back.”
From the highway, the place might be any other Hamptons-esque, whiteshingled house. But five silver BMW 7 Series sedans graze at the gate, a chauffeured fleet for short-haul use at the house’s discretion.
Edison bulbs light the Lshaped, 91-seat dining room. Tablecloths barely muffle sound, which surges as the house reaches a rolling boil by 8:30 p.m. The room opens onto a 12-seat courtyard and a covered patio with a long bar and 60 more table seats.
Rubber chickens and lobsters adorn picnic tables, where guests share lobster boils (serving six to eight at $125 per person) and friedchicken feasts (for parties of six to eight at $75 per head).
Behind the picnic tables sprawls a rolling lawn. Like Summer House’s predecessor, Moby’s, it has chairs, benches and flickering fireflies. But Guidara added enough novelties for a miniature-golf course: a windmill, animal sculptures, bocce courts and pingpong tables.
Unlike Eleven Madison Park, where the prix-fixe dinner starts at $295, EMP’s dining room is all à la carte. (Snacks are $12 to $16, starters $18 to $24 and mains $28 to $49.)
Its moniker aside, EMP offers nothing like the Manhattan flagship’s complex, seared and cured foie gras pudding with asparagus gelée. Most dishes are in the American summertime mode. A few are transplants from Manhattan: snow-pea chiffonade salad from the NoMad, the “Humm dog” from the NoMad Bar.
A few nights ago, Guidara urged the couple next to us to order house-favorite “milk and honey,” a sublime marriage of soft-serve vanilla ice cream and honey brittle that’s based on the richer Eleven Madison Park and NoMad original dish.
There’s even garden-variety orecchiette with tomato sauce and meatballs.
“I eat this myself every day,” Guidara says. “It’s a little bit of Mamma Guidara” — the old-school Italian menu at NoMad Bar on Sundays.
Not to miss is the picnictable fried chicken. Humm uses only dark meat, far juicier than white. Cayenne-andpaprika dip lends a Cajun note. How he makes the skin so candy-crisp is a miracle of the Hamptons night.
Other standouts include black-bass-and-shellfish bouillabasse for two ($95), butter-poached lobster ($49), and corn-and-Parmesan flatbread with Burgundy black truffles ($23).
What about celebrity guests? “We’re not really into that part of the season yet,” Guidara says, although he does mention Alec Baldwin. But it isn’t about boldfaces. It’s all about the food and the mood — an impossible mirage that will disappear Sept. 4, when the summertime breathes its last.