NYCGuide

Where To Eat In The Hamptons With A Big Group

Need to eat dinner with a crew in the Hamptons? Here are your best bets.
Where To Eat In The Hamptons With A Big Group image

photo credit: Noah Fecks

Going out to dinner in the Hamptons: not always the best. Food can be open-another-credit-card expensive, service can be painfully bad, and there’s usually a random guy your friend invited from Bumble who’s being weird. And if you’re rolling with a big group, things can get even more complicated.

When it’s someone in the house’s birthday and/or no one knows how to actually operate a grill, dinners out on the town are sometimes necessary—and they don’t have to be bad. Here are our favorite places to eat out with a group in Amagansett, East Hampton, and Montauk. And for all of our top restaurants in the area, check out our exhaustive guides to the Hamptons and Montauk.


THE SPOTS


Tacos

The Hamptons

$$$$Perfect For:Casual Weeknight DinnerBig GroupsOutdoor/Patio Situation
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Just off the highway in Amagansett, La Fondita is a useful taco spot to have in your back pocket when your hangry friends are all ignoring each other and need some sustenance to stop the mindless scrolling. Know this is a grab-some-tacos-and-sit-at-picnic-tables situation and not a big-dinner-before-a-night-out destination. However, you can order cocktails from neighboring sibling restaurant Coche Comedor and camp out by the fire pit for a smaller group gathering. La Fondita also offers big orders to go, and with some cans of beer from Brent’s General Store nearby, you can book it to the beach for an impromptu party.


With a higher price point and a location on a tame stretch of Route 27 between Wainscott and East Hampton, Highway isn’t the place to start a wild night out. Despite the chaotic-seeming menu, the food here is very good. Go for things like orecchiette with sweet sausage and peas, spicy papaya and crab salad, and a daily bread service with olive oil and butter from Vermont. There are plenty of big round tables that are great for groups, plus semi-private and private dining options. This place is lively, but it’s best suited for a night when you just want some good food and a few bottles of wine.


photo credit: Noah Fecks

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Dip your toes in the sand at Rita Cantina’s beachy porch, where groups can huddle at picnic tables under yellow fringed umbrellas for several rounds of frozen cucumber or passion fruit margaritas. Share plenty of guac, salsa, and queso before digging into adobe-crusted Oaxacan fried chicken, duck carnitas, and plenty of tacos. They also do brunch, and the long cushioned booths inside are a good rainy-day backup for groups of seven or fewer people.


A local staple since 1988, this Tuscan restaurant is always full of friends and families enjoying wood-fired pizzas and dishes like the catch of the day dressed in olive tapenade. Come for wine and a farm-to-table menu seamlessly merging local produce with pastas like housemade ricotta cavatelli. Reservations are easy to make for groups of up to 10, and groups of 11-20 can book a $125 per person prix-fixe on the covered back patio. There’s no kids’ menu, and strollers and pets aren’t allowed, so expect a more rule-following crowd that’s still eager to get after some rosé and spaghetti.


When the most random collection of people you know is Out East simultaneously, meet your coworkers, college roommates, and middle school crush whose company just IPOed at Springs Tavern. It’s a cozy neighborhood bar inside, but outside you can lounge at luxe picnic tables with fresh flowers and white tablecloths that are shaded by oversize umbrellas. 

Brunch, dinner, and Happy Hour are all good moves at this no-reservations spot. Fuel your casual big group hang with upscale bar snacks (shishito peppers, crisp wings, calamari), salads as big as your social circle, and satisfying burgers (even one for vegans, so everyone’s happy).


Whether or not you’ve parked your yacht at Three Mile Harbor, this Mediterranean oasis is here for you and your group. Book a big table by the water—if you secure an outdoor spot just before sunset, you’ll impress everybody—for heaping platters of fritto misto, preserved lemon-flecked spaghetti with clams, and more coastal Italian dishes. If your group tends to linger or arrive at different times, plan to meet at the bar for a pre-dinner spritz, or hang out after hours for dancing and bottle service. Groups of seven or more can make reservations online.


This East Hampton Turkish spot is originally from Miami, but they both happen to have a lovely patio and hot pink beet hummus. The menu of mezes, kebabs, and salads easily lends itself to sharing, and a $26 kids’ meal of chicken tenders and french fries ensures this spot is family-friendly. Weekend evenings bring out DJs, dancing, and general sceniness. The brick patio is fenced off to block road noise, with a cushy banquette and cafe-style tables that can be pushed together for crowds.


The massive dining room and adjacent spacious backyard make Moby’s the place to meet up during the summer. They serve salads, pizzas, and pastas, plus cute fruit-forward cocktails like their summer martini with Grey Goose, strawberries, mango, and lemongrass. 

Parties of eight or more can pre-book a pre-fixe family-style menu, which starts at $80 per person ($40 for kids) and includes antipasti, pizzas, and mains like tagliatelle alla norma. Fire pits and bocce courts can also keep the night going, or help you escape an awkward conversation with that lonely stranger who keeps claiming they’re Gwneyth Paltrow’s house manager.


Montauk’s seafood-focused steakhouse is practically designed for big group feasts, dressing up, and splurging on caviar service and raw bar towers. You can share pretty much everything on the menu, like fish prepared steakhouse style (bone-in tuna ribeye and swordfish sirloin), steaks, chops, and a Southampton maitake mushroom steak marinated in 20-year Jerez sherry. You can book a table for up to 14 people, and private dining is also available for groups over 10.


Birthdays, relatively tame bachelorette parties, families out on the town—you’ll find them all at South Edison on a given Saturday night. This is a lively restaurant with the benefit of being right in the center of Montauk. If your plan is to head to Memory Motel, The Point, The Gig Shack, or some other relative sh*tshow in town, but would like to have a civilized meal beforehand, do it here. The spicy oyster shooters are fun, if you can handle swallowing a raw bivalve soaking in habanero vodka, or just skip to the crisp panko-coated fried olives stuffed with goat cheese, crispy oyster tacos, and pork chop parm.


For a beach destination, there are very few places to actually eat on a beach in the Hamptons and Montauk. You can at Navy Beach. It’s admittedly a small, rocky beach, but it’s a beach nonetheless. Come for drinks at sunset, and get a table outside if you can. If you can’t or the weather’s iffy, the inside is perfectly nice too. They do family-style menus starting at $60 per person for lunch and dinner, with shareable crowd-pleasers including crispy calamari salad, spicy honey fried chicken, and salmon teriyaki.


Trying to not spend $100 a person on fancy drinks and a kind-of-average piece of halibut you don’t really want anyway? Head to Hideaway for coastal and casual Mexican dishes including ceviche, crispy fish tacos, shrimp burritos, beers, and margaritas. There’s lots of outdoor seating, with plenty of picnic benches near the water, and a kids menu that makes this spot nice for early evening family gatherings—before the weekend DJ dance parties, of course. Dogs are welcome outside also.


Duryea’s may always be remembered as an extremely low-key, BYOB, eat-lobster-off-a-plastic-plate sort of situation, but was taken over by new ownership circa 2016, and is now the kind of place where people order magnums of rosé and seafood towers before a game of credit card roulette. You still order at a counter, though, so the result is something between a chill lobster deck and Malibu chic, but with an East Coast attitude. They don’t take reservations, so come early.

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