‘Entertaining” should apply equally to host and guests. When you allow yourself to have real fun shopping, décorating, and presenting the food and drink you offer your special people, it shows. This adds to the overall enjoyment of the holiday season. Tracking down just what you have in mind for the décor and tabletop settings — or just browsing for inspiration among the shops’ displays — doesn’t make hosting easier, but the East End now has such a wealth of home-goods stores there’s a shop to suit every personality and aesthetic.
About 15 years ago, this writer went looking for tiny salt spoons to complement some recently inherited antique salt cellars. Every clerk I asked for tiny salt spoons just did a “Huh?” face — until we reached Loaves & Fishes Cookshop on Main Street in Bridgehampton. Gerrit van Kempen, a co-owner, had just one question: “Bone or shell?” Ah, home. When you find it, you know.
At Loaves & Fishes Cookshop you can find friendly staff and colorful accessories from many of the best European brands, including Le Creuset pots, Sabre flatware, Riedel drinking glasses, and handblown glasses ribboned with spirals of brightly colored glass. If your vibe is vibrant, high-quality Hamptons-y, this is a great place to start.
Maybe you’re so “old school” you only shop at America’s first department store, Hildreth’s on Main Street in Southampton. Here you can find everything from shot glasses to Schott Zwiesel stemware; kitchen basics like Fire King measuring cups; wedding-worthy gifts such as Portmeirion china, as well as loads of towels, and Matouk bedding.
Are you a yogi who donates to the Nature Conservancy and vacations at Tahoe? Try Monc XIII by Natasha Esch on Madison Street in Sag Harbor for sheepskin-covered chairs, settees, and stools. So fuzzy. Or snatch up a bunch of suede-covered letter boxes for gift-giving. You can’t have too many colorful marble end tables, or sharp Coltellerie Berti knives.
Sage and Madison has taken Sag Harbor Village quietly by storm. Sage and Madison’s owner and curator, Chris Coffee, opened it during the pandemic, setting out to create a tiny but mighty shopping institution on the corner of, yes, Sage and Madison Streets. If your look is understated but very high end, Sage and Madison’s monochromatic ceramics and carved wood serving utensils could be just the things. (Definitely indulge in some cashmere accessories for the cook.) So into the cozy-luxe atmosphere of Sage & Main that you don’t want to leave? This is the rare home store where you can actually move in: Mr. Coffee lets out two-bedroom suites in the main house. You can also buy a cup of coffee and park yourself in the lovely garden patio, which is open year-round.
In Home on Sag Harbor’s Main Street has everything the modernist could possibly need to keep tidied in a tall, neat stack — or hanging from their walls — in black, or white, or another neutral. In fact, they carry Le Creuset in, specifically, black, white, and gray tones. There are cocktail shakers, cutting boards, hot pads, knives, pepper mills, place mats, Riedel glasses, scales, sheets, soaps, teapots, and toilet brushes, to name just a dozen things in alphabetical order. If you’re highly organized, you’ll appreciate what this “in” store has in store.
Maybe you are a thrift-store hound with a vision of using recycled bandannas for napkins, lining your open shelves with colorful Pyrex bowls, or adorning your ballroom with stag’s heads. If so, try one of the newest stores on the South Fork, Sag Harbor Salvage Co. on Long Island Avenue in Sag Harbor, which is not a housewares store per se but which joins the Ladies Village Improvement Society (L.V.I.S. or “Elvis”) on Main Street in East Hampton, Mako’s Vintage on the main drag in Montauk, and Nellie’s in Amagansett as a destination for vintage housewares and kitchenalia. With the closing of Antiques Center Southampton on Nov. 15, vintage mavens are pretty much down to these thrift-shop emporiums, as well as the beloved Sage Street Antiques in Sag Harbor. (Sage Street is a longtime haunt of Miss Martha Stewart herself.)
Speaking of Nellie’s, at the opposite end of the spectrum, and the opposite end of Amagansett’s Main Street, is a little house that’s home to the very modern E-E Home. Check out their English flatware, simple metal candlesticks, and shapely ceramic pieces.
East Hampton boasts what might be the quirkiest décor store in Clic Home, located behind Newtown Lane, cater-corner to Stop and Shop. Here you’ll find all you didn’t know you were looking for, from faux animal throw rugs (“faux throws”) to ceramic pieces reading “Mrs. And Mrs.” to kaleidoscopic plates painted with beautiful women and butterflies. It’s super funky — are you?
Just down Newtown Lane, and a world apart, is the Monogram Shop. This is the place for preppie types — with a sense of humor. An old-East-Hampton, Lily Pond Lane look can be obtained here in many forms, from picnicking wares to towels to baby onesies, some items already personalized with humorous sayings (napkins printed with “Stop Talking,” a tissue box embroidered with the word “Blow”), some ready for your monogram.
Are you into midcentury modern, and do you like to host cocktail parties with Henry Mancini vinyl spinning on the hi-fi? Go to HomeNature on Pond Lane in Southampton. There you’ll find white-on-white cool stuff plus conversation pieces such as carved wood or glass bowls worthy of the most chic Space Age coffee table.
When you see what you’re really looking for, you’ll know — snap it up and make it yours. Good pieces deserve good homes.
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Stacy is co-author, with Hillary Davis, of “The Hamptons Kitchen” (Norton). The second printing of this best-selling cookbook and wine-pairing guide is out on Dec. 18. Many of the props used in “The Hamptons Kitchen” were shot while on loan from Hildreth’s Home Goods in Southampton.