Two summers ago, if you were walking Main Street on a Saturday morning, you turned around somewhere near Amber Waves. Everything west of Hedges Lane felt like the part of the hamlet you drove past on the way to somewhere else. The Mobil station, a shuttered 1920s building, a red barn behind it that had cycled through tenants for years. You did not linger.
This August the same walk keeps going. A coffee shop, a bookstore, a salon, and a jam maker have opened inside and around 136 Main Street, and for the first time in a long while the walkable center of Amagansett runs the full length of the business district rather than clustering around the Square. The change is small on paper. On foot it rearranges the week.
The building at 136 Main sits next to the Mobil station at the western entrance to the hamlet. Four years ago its owners floated a proposal to demolish it along with the red barn behind it, both part of Amagansett's historic district, and replace them with a suite of offices, twelve retail stores, four affordable housing units and more. The East Hampton Town Planning Board rejected it, and the parcel is now for sale. The current asking price for the entire property is $19 million.
What arrived instead is smaller and quieter. Following expensive interior work, Jamagansett in a passage opposite the parking lot, Sett Coffee and Sea Dragon Books on Main Street, and LaParlour, a beauty salon on the ground floor of the barn building, have been individually modernized into inviting little shops. Sett was opened by John and Kelly Piccinnini, owners of the Clam Bar and, most recently, The Corner in Sag Harbor, and the room has become the west end's living room. On a Saturday morning the crowd skews under forty, with strollers and dogs and, per the East Hampton Star, conversations about Little League and the price of peanut butter at the I.G.A.
The west end of Amagansett, once dead as a desert with only a few oases of here-today-gone-tomorrow storefronts, has come to life this summer. — The East Hampton Star, July 2026
If you live here, the tell is not the openings themselves. It is the fact that residents are treating the block as a destination in its own right. The siblings Tricia Hoefling and Charles Billings of Sagaponack, along with their mother, opened Sea Dragon at 136 Main in what had been a once rundown corner of the hamlet. Jamagansett, which opened this summer, is already developing a following for small-batch jams made from peak-season produce, running from combinations like salty blueberry to more nostalgic classics. Neither is trying to be an event. Both have become part of the loop.
The rhythm of a good Amagansett week now spreads across Main Street rather than pooling at one end.
The mid-week market has quietly become the one for people who cook. The Rt. 27 Farmers Market runs Wednesdays from 2:00pm to 6:00pm at the Amagansett Historical Association, 129 Main Street at the corner of Windmill Lane. It is small, it is on a lawn, and it is the least crowded produce moment of the week. If you are already headed east, the ReWild compost drop-off table at Amber Waves is Wednesday mornings 8am to noon, and you can bring your food scraps and meet the Amber Waves family, including the goats.
The Amagansett Square Farmers Market runs every Thursday afternoon from 3:30pm to 6:00pm through the end of September, with local and seasonal produce, breads, granola, jams, shrubs, salsas, juices, fish, grass-fed meats, gluten and dairy free treats, dog snacks, gin tasting and live music. A late afternoon slot is unusual for a Hamptons market and it changes who shows up. Fewer visitors, more residents rolling in after work, and easier parking than any of the morning markets down the road.
The Stephen Talkhouse at 161 Main opens at 7:00 pm Friday and Saturday and runs until 3:00 am. Before the show, the walking loop has more edges than it did a year ago. Jack's Stir Brew has been serving at Amagansett Square since 2010, Doubles has been running out of the former Hampton Chutney building for a little over three years with Caribbean-inspired fare served at a wood-topped counter facing the open kitchen and a few picnic tables with yellow umbrellas, and LUNCH Lobster Roll at 1980 Montauk Highway reopened for the season on April 24 and now runs seven days a week. Coche Comedor, from the team behind Nick & Toni's, La Fondita, Towline BBQ, Rowdy Hall, and Honest Catering, keeps the frozen margaritas and on-tap sangria pouring for the pre-Talkhouse crowd.
The Stephen Talkhouse has been featuring internationally-renowned performers alongside local East End artists since 1987. The August calendar is denser than most residents realize. A short read of what is coming in:
If you have not been in a couple of years, the Tuesday industry night is the one to know about. It is the closest thing the hamlet has to a residents' bar on a school night in August.
Amagansett Square did not stop being the center of the Square. It stopped being the only center. Beneath the 200-year-old elm and chestnut trees at Amagansett Square are clothing, shoe, flower, and gift shops, a music store, salon and spa, yoga studio, and several food and beverage shops, along with movies on the lawn and Easter egg hunts. The tenants read like a list of quiet institutions:
What is different in 2026 is that the shortest walk between these tenants and the new west-end cluster is roughly six minutes. A resident who used to do coffee at Jack's and be done can now do coffee at Jack's, walk west for a book, and be back at the Square before the bag from Cavaniola's warms up.
The gravitational center of a resident's food week is still Amber Waves. Amber Waves Farm at 367 Main Street occupies roughly 45 acres of working farmland across Amagansett and East Hampton, operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, employs over 100 people at peak season, feeds more than 300 CSA families, and runs a daily market and cafe. The market is open daily and the café is open Friday through Tuesday from 8am to 3pm. The farm's food pantry program provides fresh, healthy options to individuals and families facing food insecurity while training new farmers and reducing food waste.
The interesting thing is what happens when you set the two ends of Main Street against each other. The west end is new, private, and driven by three or four small operators with retail leases. The east end anchor is old, nonprofit, and structurally impossible to replicate. Between them, the entire commercial life of the hamlet fits inside a mile. That is a shorter functional main street than either East Hampton Village or Sag Harbor, and it is the reason a Thursday in August in Amagansett still feels like a Thursday and not a Saturday.
If you have not walked the western half of Main Street since last summer, this is the weekend for it. Start at Sett before the after-lunch line forms, keep going to Sea Dragon, and let the Square be the second half of the loop rather than the whole point.
If you own a home here and are curious what this year's foot-traffic map is doing to the value of what you own, or if you are eyeing a place on the western half of Main and want an honest read on the block, the Burns Team has lived on the East End long enough to tell you what the last three summers actually looked like. Get Your Home Valuation when you are ready.
Compass
63 Main Street
East Hampton, NY 11937
Burns Team