For as long as most people can remember, a Saturday on Main Street in Westhampton Beach ran one direction. You parked somewhere near the theater, walked west past the boutiques, and if there was music on the Great Lawn you crossed over for that. The Montauk Highway end of the corridor was where you drove through on your way somewhere else, usually Riverhead or Hampton Bays, because that stretch didn't give you a reason to stop.
That habit no longer describes how the street works, and the reason isn't a single new restaurant. It's a hiring number.
The habit that broke, and why one number explains it
Citarella opened its Westhampton Beach location this year at 141 Montauk Highway, the company's fourth Hamptons market. That alone would have been a nice seasonal amenity, another place to grab a lobster roll before the beach. What makes it different is that the store runs on the same staff in January as it does in July, and by the company's own account it added roughly 60 year-round jobs to bring that store to life. A seasonal fish counter closes for the winter and the corridor forgets it exists until Memorial Day. A year-round staff of sixty doesn't. It's payroll, parking, lunch breaks, and foot traffic that shows up in February the same as August.
That distinction is the whole story. Before this year, the Montauk Highway stretch was something you drove through. Now it's something you walk to, and it stays that way after the summer renters leave. Fine Wine and Fruit King, both long-standing businesses on that same stretch, are picking up foot traffic they didn't have before, simply because people now have a destination-grade reason to park nearby instead of continuing north to the traditional shopping blocks.
The walk, end to end
What actually changed is that the six or seven minutes between the Montauk Highway anchor and the Main Street anchor filled in with new stops alongside long-standing ones. Here's what the walk looks like now, roughly south to north, for anyone doing the Saturday errands or just killing an afternoon.
- Citarella, 141 Montauk Highway — open early to late, this is the new south end of the corridor. It's a full grocery stop, not a specialty add-on, with a seafood counter and prepared foods that make it a legitimate one-stop before heading north.
- PopUp Bagels, 130 Main Street — the sourdough bagel concept, founded during the pandemic, does its "grip, rip, and dip" bagels whole rather than sliced, with rotating specialty schmears alongside the classics.
- Brody's Coffee, Main Street — for years the morning coffee run meant a drive to the bakery or a stop at the deli. That gap is closed now, with a menu that runs from a pistachio cream latte to a brown sugar shaken espresso.
- Westhampton Beach Brew & Grill, 115 Main Street — this is the space that used to house Daphne's. Brian Sckipp and John Salvaggio, who have run Westhampton Beach Brewing out of the Gabreski Airport industrial park since 2016, spent the off-season moving a full restaurant onto Main Street, timed to open around the village's spring parade season. The menu carries their Bavarian pretzels over from the taproom along with local fish and chips, a burger built on a blend from Justin's Chop Shop, and a Peruvian-inspired half chicken that the owners point to as the dish meant to surprise people who came in expecting only wings and beer.
- Ivy on Main and flora, 149 Main Street — the two anchors that were already there before any of this started, still running the New American dinner and cocktail service, and brunch through dinner, that regulars already know.
- 76 Main Street, the WHBPAC — the north end of the walk, a 425-seat theater that punches well above its size for a village this compact.
Walk that list start to finish and it's six stops in one direction with no need to reposition the car. A year ago, hitting the market and then catching a show meant a drive in between. Now it's a straight line.
What still holds the north end together
The theater and Fauna are doing the heavy lifting on the Main Street side of the loop, and neither one is new, which matters. The corridor didn't get replaced. It got a second half.
Fauna has quietly become the most dependable live music room on this end of the South Fork. Thursday nights run a jazz set on the patio from six to nine, with a rotating cast of trios that keeps the night from feeling like the same show twice. Saturdays turn into something different entirely. On the restaurant's own account, Saturday evenings become an open-air lounge, the kind of night where you go for one drink and stay for three.
The WHBPAC carries the weight it always has, and the two things residents relearn every July are worth repeating for anyone new to the routine. There's no lot attached to the theater itself, and while parking directly on Main Street is possible, most of those spots run on two-hour limits, with some capped at thirty minutes. The village lots off Mill Road and Sunset Avenue are the safer bet on a show night, especially now that the same trip might also include a stop at the market or a bagel run beforehand. The theater's PianoFest tradition, which showcases young pianists in a format built around encouragement rather than head-to-head competition, remains the one night a lot of longtime residents book before anything else goes on the summer calendar.
Why this sticks past Labor Day
The easy read on all of this is that Westhampton Beach had a good year for restaurant openings, and that's true as far as it goes. But a string of new restaurants is a seasonal story. What happened here is structural, and the difference matters if you live here rather than visit.
A seasonal opening changes the summer. A year-round grocery anchor with sixty employees changes the whole street's shape, because it doesn't unwind in October. The walk from Citarella to the WHBPAC will still make sense in February, when Brody's is still pulling in a coffee crowd and Brew & Grill is running its Bavarian pretzels for a Tuesday night crowd instead of a Saturday one. That's the part worth sitting with. The old single-spine Main Street depended on the theater and the summer season to draw people down the block. This new version has a second reason to be there that doesn't care what month it is.
If you've been driving straight through the Montauk Highway stretch out of habit, this is the year that habit stops making sense. The block finally gives you a reason to park once and walk both ways.
If you're the kind of person who tracks these shifts because you're thinking about where you might eventually want to be on the South Fork, or you're already here and curious how these changes ripple into the rest of the market, I'd be glad to talk through what it looks like on the ground. Samantha Bisagni has spent years watching these small corridors change shape one lease at a time, and that kind of local read is exactly what informs good decisions here, whether you're settling in or just settling a Saturday routine. Let's Connect.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
