Eckart's Luncheonette Westhampton Beach Experience

In Westhampton Beach, a former Prohibition-era saloon has outlasted every trend, every crash, and every force that tried to make it something it’s not.

The Memory

The tin ceiling is the first thing you notice. Then the floor—worn in patterns that map a century of footsteps, darker where the traffic flows, lighter in the corners where people linger. After that, the smell hits you: coffee that’s been brewing since before dawn, bacon fat, something sweet from the griddle, and underneath it all, the particular mustiness of a building that’s been standing since Taft was president.

You’re not supposed to be here. Instead, you’re supposed to be at brunch somewhere with a cocktail menu and a waitlist and someone’s idea of “elevated” eggs Benedict. By all accounts, you’re supposed to be performing your Saturday, documenting it, optimizing it for an audience that doesn’t exist.

But here you are at a counter in Westhampton Beach, sitting on a stool that’s older than your parents, eating eggs that cost less than a latte, reading a newspaper made of actual paper. Meanwhile, the woman next to you is talking to the guy behind the counter about her daughter’s soccer game. Remarkably, he knows her daughter’s name. In fact, he knows everyone’s daughter’s name.

Outside, the world continues its relentless campaign to become something else. In here, however, a ceiling fan turns. The cash register—the old kind, with buttons that clunk when you press them—rings up a ticket. Someone laughs.

You realize you’ve been holding your breath. Finally, you let it out.

This is what it feels like to stop.

The Truth

Eckart’s Luncheonette has been operating since 1911. That number is almost impossible to process. Nevertheless, try anyway.

The Titanic hadn’t sunk yet. World War I was three years away. Women couldn’t vote. Moreover, the Hamptons wasn’t “the Hamptons”—it was a collection of farming and fishing villages where people worked for a living and nobody had heard of a hedge fund because hedge funds didn’t exist.

Jacob Eckart opened the place as a barroom, a saloon, on Mill Road in Westhampton Beach. Then Prohibition happened, and alcohol became illegal, and Jacob did what survivors do: he adapted. Consequently, the barroom became a soda shop. Eckart’s Soda Shoppe. He sold ice cream and egg creams instead of whiskey. As a result, he stayed in business.

That’s the first lesson of Eckart’s: survive. Leave thriving to the startups, disrupting to the VCs, scaling to Silicon Valley. Simply survive. Keep the doors open. Keep the griddle hot. Outlast the forces that want to turn you into something else or erase you entirely.

In 1949, Jacob’s son Warren—everyone called him “Red”—took over with his wife Shirley. Together, they ran the place for decades, raised six children, turned the soda shop into a luncheonette. Subsequently, their daughter Shirley (yes, another Shirley, families do this) and her husband Ray took the reins in the ’80s. Now the fourth generation of Eckarts keeps the business going.

Four generations. One location. 114 years.

Bourdain would have walked in here and immediately understood what he was looking at. Not a restaurant—a commitment. Specifically, a family that decided, over a century ago, that this corner of this town was where they belonged, and then proceeded to prove it every single day for four generations. He’d have sat at the counter, ordered whatever they told him to order, and listened. That’s what you do in a place like this. You listen.

The History

The Original Bones

The building itself is a time capsule. The tin ceiling is original. Likewise, the booths are original. There’s an antique phone booth that nobody uses but nobody would dream of removing. Furthermore, the walls are covered with memorabilia—old Life magazines, Coca-Cola advertisements, antique chemist bottles that Jacob Eckart and his descendants collected over the decades. There’s also a newspaper clipping from when Westhampton Beach High School’s Hurricanes became All Suffolk Champions in football. The new history accumulates alongside the old.

“My grandparents collected a lot of those bottles,” Danielle Eckart told an interviewer. “And there’s still plenty more stored away.”

There’s a sign somewhere in the restaurant—the kind of hand-lettered thing that’s been there so long nobody remembers who made it—that warns customers: Don’t let the regulars scare you away.

This is a joke. However, it’s also not a joke.

The Regulars

Because Eckart’s has regulars the way a church has parishioners. Specifically, there are people who have been eating breakfast at this counter since the Kennedy administration. Additionally, there are booths that belong, unofficially but absolutely, to specific people at specific times. In essence, there’s a social hierarchy here that has nothing to do with money and everything to do with tenure.

The phrase “hardcore local” gets thrown around carelessly in the Hamptons. Everyone wants to claim they’re not a tourist, not a weekender, not one of those people. At Eckart’s, however, the distinction is enforced by time. You become a regular by showing up—not once, not for a season, but for years, for decades, until the people behind the counter know your name and your order and your kids’ names and your whole damn story.

Red Eckart, by all accounts, was a character. He had a reputation for what you might generously call “unconventional hospitality.” For instance, there are stories about him sticking his thumb in customers’ coffee to test the temperature. For a while, a sign outside advertised a “Deadbeat of the Day,” publicly shaming whoever had allegedly failed to pay their bill. During the holidays, the Eckarts threw parties that are still discussed in certain Westhampton circles—the kind of parties that generate stories people tell for decades.

This is not the Hamptons of Goop and guest lists. Rather, this is the Hamptons of people who’ve been here long enough to remember when it was just a place where people lived.

The Sociology

Pierre Bourdieu would have found Eckart’s fascinating as a study in what he called “field”—a social arena with its own rules, its own hierarchies, its own forms of capital.

In most Hamptons establishments, the dominant capital is economic. Money talks. Money gets you the table, the reservation, the attention of the staff. Ultimately, money sorts you into your proper place.

At Eckart’s, by contrast, the dominant capital is temporal. How long have you been coming here? That’s the question that determines your status. The billionaire who walks in for the first time ranks below the retired schoolteacher who’s been eating eggs at the counter every Tuesday for thirty years. Similarly, the hedge fund manager in the $3,000 casual wear is nobody; the guy in the paint-splattered Carhartt who went to high school with the owner is somebody.

The Inverted Order

This is a radical inversion of the normal Hamptons order, and it’s enforced not by policy but by culture. Nobody’s going to refuse to serve you if you’re new. But you’ll feel it. You’ll sense that there’s a frequency you’re not tuned to, a set of references you don’t understand, a history you’re not part of. The counter will serve you breakfast, but it won’t recognize you. Not yet.

One reviewer captured this perfectly: “Lunch counter with limited table-seating. Inexpensive. It’s THE place where the long-time locals meet for breakfast confabs, luncheon gabfests, or just coffee and your daily paper. They just don’t make them like Eckart’s anymore. It quietly celebrated its Centennial several years back, and is still going strong.”

They just don’t make them like Eckart’s anymore. That sentence carries an ocean of grief inside it. We all know it’s true. And we all know what’s being lost.

The Uncomfortable Part

Here’s what Bourdain would make us say: Eckart’s survival is a minor miracle, and miracles don’t scale.

The economics of a luncheonette—cheap food, thin margins, labor-intensive service—don’t work in modern America. They especially don’t work in the Hamptons, where real estate costs have made it nearly impossible for low-margin businesses to survive. Every year, another diner closes. Every year, another family-run place gets replaced by something with a “concept” and a PR team and prices that only make sense if you’ve stopped thinking about what things should cost.

Eckart’s has survived because the family owns the building. That’s it. That’s the secret. If they were paying market rent on that Mill Road location, we’d be writing an obituary instead of a profile.

The Brutal Math

This is the brutal math of the Hamptons: authenticity is a function of real estate. The “real” places that remain are mostly places where someone, decades ago, had the foresight or the luck to buy rather than lease. Everyone else, consequently, has been squeezed out.

The Eckart family made that bet a hundred years ago. As a result, they stayed. They held on. And now they’re one of the last outposts of something that used to be common—a family business that serves the community, knows the community, is the community.

But look around Westhampton Beach. Count the storefronts. How many of them are serving the people who live here year-round? How many of them could survive on local traffic alone, without the summer money, without the tourists?

Eckart’s can. Eckart’s does. Yet Eckart’s is the exception that proves how bad things have gotten.

One of the Yelp reviews—and yes, this is the kind of place that still gets Yelp reviews from people who don’t understand what they’re looking at—complained about the service. The reviewer was upset that the staff seemed more interested in talking to regulars than attending to her immediately.

She wasn’t wrong, exactly. Indeed, the staff is more interested in the regulars. That’s the point. That’s what makes it a place and not just a business. But that distinction is invisible if you’ve never experienced a place that actually knows its people.

Bourdain would have read that review and laughed. Then he’d have gotten sad. Then he’d have ordered another cup of coffee and sat there for a while, watching the ceiling fan turn, thinking about what we’ve lost.

The Code

Eckart’s operates on unwritten rules. Here they are, written:

Show up. Not once. Not twice. For years. This is how you become a regular. There’s no shortcut. You can’t buy your way in. You can only earn it through presence.

Read the room. If the counter’s full of people who obviously know each other, you’re witnessing a ritual. Don’t interrupt it. Instead, find a booth. Wait your turn.

Don’t be precious. The menu is the menu. The eggs are the eggs. If you need substitutions, modifications, accommodations for your specific dietary philosophy, you’re in the wrong place. Essentially, this is not a restaurant that exists to fulfill your preferences. It’s a restaurant that exists to serve breakfast.

Talk to people. Or don’t. But if someone next to you at the counter starts a conversation, engage. This is a social space, not a co-working space. Therefore, put your phone away.

Tip properly. These people have been doing this for four generations. They’re not getting rich. The prices are low because the family has made a choice to keep them low. Don’t take advantage of that.

Come back. The only way to belong here is to keep showing up. Eckart’s will wait.

What to Order

Breakfast. This is a breakfast place. Yes, they serve lunch. Order breakfast anyway.

The omelettes. They’re famous for a reason. Fluffy, properly filled, served with home fries and toast. The spinach and mozzarella is the move if you want a recommendation, but honestly, you can’t go wrong.

The pancakes. Classic. Thick. Not trying to be anything other than what they are.

The eggs Florentine. For when you want to feel slightly fancy without leaving the luncheonette. It’s decadent in a way that doesn’t announce itself.

The turkey club. One reviewer called it “hands-down the best turkey club I’ve ever had, anywhere.” That’s a big claim. Remarkably, it holds up.

The egg cream. Because you’re at a former soda shoppe that survived Prohibition, and some traditions should be honored.

Coffee. Unlimited refills. Strong. Served in mugs that have seen some things.

What It Costs

Almost nothing. Breakfast—real breakfast, eggs and meat and potatoes and toast and coffee—runs you under $15. You can feed a family here for what a single entrée costs at most Hamptons restaurants.

This is a choice. The Eckart family could charge more. After all, everyone around them charges more. But they don’t, because Eckart’s has always been a place for the town, and “the town” includes people who work for a living, people who count their dollars, people who can’t drop $50 on brunch without thinking about it.

One reviewer nailed it: “If you want a great breakfast (or lunch) in an unpretentious atmosphere, Eckart’s can’t be beat. A Westhampton institution for good reason.”

Unpretentious. In the Hamptons, that word is almost an act of defiance.

The Point

Don Draper built campaigns around the idea that products could transport you somewhere—to a better version of yourself, to a memory you didn’t know you had, to a feeling you couldn’t name but desperately wanted to feel again.

Eckart’s doesn’t transport you anywhere. That’s precisely the point. It’s not a portal to some imagined past. It is the past, continuous with the present, still here, still serving eggs.

The tin ceiling is the same tin ceiling Jacob Eckart looked up at in 1911. Meanwhile, the floor is worn by the footsteps of a century’s worth of customers. The booths have held generations of the same families, eating the same breakfasts, having the same conversations about weather and kids and work and nothing in particular.

What Persistence Looks Like

This is what persistence looks like. Not the inspirational poster version—not the founder grinding through obstacles to achieve scale and disruption. Instead, the quiet version. The showing-up-every-day version. The version where four generations of one family decide that this place matters, this community matters, and they’re going to keep the griddle hot until they can’t anymore.

Bourdain spent his career looking for places like this. He found them all over the world—in Vietnam, in Argentina, in the outer boroughs of New York. Family-run, unpretentious, stubborn. Places where the food was good because someone gave a damn, and the giving-a-damn was visible in every detail.

He also spent his career mourning them. Because places like this are disappearing. The economics don’t work. The real estate doesn’t work. The culture doesn’t support them. Consequently, every year, there are fewer.

Eckart’s is still here. Four generations and counting. A barroom that became a soda shop that became a luncheonette that became, somehow, against all odds, a 114-year-old testament to the idea that some things don’t have to change.

Walk in. Sit at the counter. Order the omelette. Let the coffee cool a little before you drink it.

Outside, the Hamptons will continue its transformation into something unrecognizable. The money will keep coming. The old places will keep closing. The character will keep draining away, one storefront at a time.

In here, however, the tin ceiling holds. The floor remembers. The griddle stays hot.

Some families just don’t leave.