Around 7 p.m. Thursday — just past aperitivo hour — plates of $85 veal parmesan and $82 strip loin were sitting on white-clothed tables at the East Hamptons outpost of Sartiano’s, the modern Soho Italian restaurant of frequented by celebrities such as Paul McCartney, Martha Stewart. , Margot Robbie and Gisele Bündchen.
But outside the Hedges Inn, which houses the hotspot, trouble seemed to be brewing. As The Post noted, East Hampton cops surrounded the building four times in less than 30 minutes.
Just after 10 p.m., a restaurant employee whispered, “There’s a SWAT team outside” — an exaggeration, to be sure, but three police officers surrounded the entrance with hydrangeas to slap Sartiano with two misdemeanors for “noise,” including loud music. registered. , which could be heard “from 50 feet away,” a restaurant insider told The Post, noting there were no fines.
But as The Post testified, the music — the softest of yacht rock, including America’s “You Could Do Magic” — could not be heard outside the building at any point and had been turned off by 9:20 p.m.
“They’re out to get him,” muttered a diner, a 45-year-old banker who lives nearby.
“He” is Scott Sartiano, the restaurateur who, according to insiders, has been visited by health inspectors or local police nearly every day since his namesake spot opened in mid-July.
As The Post’s Jennifer Gould previously reported, locals claim a letter from the village administration was sent to Hedges’ neighbors asking them to call in noise complaints.
But some, including other East Hampton business owners, say it’s an all-out war and that Sartiano is being wrongly targeted by village officials, including Mayor Jerry Larsen, a former police chief.
“They’re looking at Scott because other people have had restaurants that have evolved into after-hours clubs,” one longtime East Hampton business owner told The Post. “He is a smart businessman and he has respect. He is not looking to cause controversy.”
It has hardly been la dolce vita from birth for Sartiano this summer. In March, he began negotiations to bring his private social club, Zero Bond — whose Noho location is a favorite of Taylor Swift, Kim Kardashian and Mayor Eric Adams — to the historic Hedges Inn.
But the East Hampton Village Board killed that dream in May, passing an ordinance requiring all eating and drinking establishments in the village’s historic district to close by 11 p.m.
An attorney for the inn, Chris Kelly, told The Post in April that the ordinance appeared to be designed specifically to keep out the club.
“Let’s face it, Zero Bond is really a nightclub…” Village Administrator Marcos Baladron said at the village board meeting where the law passed on May 17, according to the East Hampton Star. “If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s a duck and no ducks are allowed here.”
“This guy has a vendetta,” a source close to the situation previously told The Post of Mayor Larsen.
In an email received on Friday, Aug. 2, Larsen told The Post that police have responded to four noise complaints at Sartiano’s since it opened — though a source close to the restaurant claimed, “They’ve sent the police seven out of 10 nights it’s been open.”
“The property comes with restrictions because it is located in a residential neighborhood. These rules/laws must be followed in order to be respectful to its neighbors,” Larsen said in an email.
Meanwhile, on Friday night, the Maidstone Hotel – 0.2 miles from Sartiano and also in a residential part of the historic district – was almost silent. Standing about 50 feet away, The Post could clearly hear a tenor saying “That’s Amore” on the outdoor patio of Italian restaurant LDV, which opened last month by LDV Hospitality, the group behind Scarpetta in Manhattan and Gurney’s in Montauk .
Just before 10pm, the performer could be heard encouraging the clapping guests to “sing along!” to “Sweet Caroline.”
“He plays until 9:30 or 10. We don’t want to get in trouble with the city,” an LDV executive told The Post, noting that they haven’t had any trouble with the police.
Some neighbors and business owners say Sartiano’s agitation seems to be more than decibel levels.
“The bottom line is they want to control the noise and they don’t want a party scene in East Hampton Village. The mayor was against the Zero Bond, that’s really what it’s about,” the business owner said.
At the May 17 hearing, resident Robert Burch lamented the prospect of Zero Bond: “They wouldn’t be open to the public, they’d be open to celebrities and all that brings; their attendants, hangers-on, fleets of black Suburbans and Escalades and throngs of paparazzi.”
“Mr. Sartiano declared in [a May] Vanity Fair interview that his philosophy is that he should be able to do “whatever he wants,” neighbor Kenneth Lipper, who also spoke at the hearing, told The Post. “Indeed, he is trying to apply his selfish philosophy to the operation of the Hedges Inn however he pleases, whether or not he fulfills the laws and covenants that govern it.”
What Sartiano actually said in that interview was about the nature of Zero Bond’s private club.
“That’s one reason why celebrities love it: People who are there every day, you never read what they’re eating, who they’re with,” Sartiano told Vanity Fair. “This is something I am very proud of. It takes me back to the late 90s when people could do whatever they wanted. And they will never do what they want again, because they are too nervous.”
Lipper added: “It is not a great stretch of one’s imagination that a violator of fire laws governing the historic district, occupancy or noise regulations and mandated closing hours would cause fire inspectors and police to visit Hedges. “
According to a restaurant insider, the “fire laws” reference is related to a Sartiano’s violation of greenery that was quickly removed.
Locals told The Post, however, it wasn’t just about Sartiano.
“Years ago [the restaurant in the Hedges Inn] it was the James Lane Cafe. Neighbors objected to outdoor dining and activity,” the business owner told The Post. In fact, Hedges has had to close every night at 10pm since a 1981 zoning board decision.
Others have suggested that Larsen may be looking to keep the locals happy for his own personal gain.
The mayor owns Protec Security, a private security firm he runs with his wife, Lisa — and that has clients neighboring the Hedges Inn, The New York Times reported in June.
“The neighbors, who the mayor has a relationship with, probably want to make sure there’s no noise in their neighborhood,” an East Hampton business owner told The Post.
The Times notes “it wasn’t hard to find triangular Protec signs sprouting from the lawns of the many homes nearby” Sartiano’s.
“The truth is that I have a client in the hearing of Hedges Inn and they have never contacted me about this matter,” Larsen said in an email to The Post.
A manager at another restaurant in East Hampton Village told The Post that he is concerned that the police focus on Sartiano may be for other businesses.
“It worries me a little. Is he [Sartiano] wrongly brush someone off at a town hall meeting? I know BS revenge happens like that,” the manager said.
He compared the “sin” of Zero Bond/Sartiano’s “place” to the East Hampton Rowdy Hall pub that was slapped with painting its facade black earlier this year — when the village’s architectural review board said the color did not “harmonize” with the colors of the historical neighborhood.
The owners appealed and won.
Several people who dined at Sartiano’s on Thursday and Friday told The Post they live nearby and are happy to have a new restaurant in Hedges.
“We live in the neighboring country and we came here [to East Hampton] for 20 years,” said a woman named Teresa, who asked that her last name not be used. “You can’t hear anything.”
While Sartiano declined to comment on specifics, he told The Post, “Despite the challenges I face every day, I am committed to providing a great culinary experience to the East Hampton community at The Hedges Inn.”
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