While Carissa’s Breads have been an East End institution for years, Carissa’s Bakery opened in East Hampton over the summer.
This summer, East Hampton’s Carissa’s The Bakery, the successful project belonging to baker-owner Carissa Waechter, will be expanding. The new, larger location will be located at 221 Pantigo Road in East Hampton. Spread out between two adjacent buildings and 3,500 square feet, the new space will feature an all-day restaurant with both indoor and outdoor seating, a bakeshop, and a production kitchen.
Ms. Waechter and her partners are in the process of applying for a liquor permit from the Town of East Hampton, and the new establishment’s café will have a full bar and will serve wine and cocktails, in addition to coffees and soft drinks. The bakery team began construction a year and a half ago, turning a retail and office space into a walk-through bakery and café (connected by an atrium), as well as a production kitchen.
The space will be able to accommodate 75 diners, 25 of which will be in an outdoor garden. Chef Molly Levine, formerly of Chez Panisse, will be the restaurant’s chef de cuisine, with oversight over all of the bakery and café’s savory offerings. The restaurant’s ethos, according to partner Lori Chemla, will be “of the time and of the moment,” taking advantage of the produce grown by collaborating farms Stones Throw Farm, Balsam Farms, and Amber Waves Farm.
The current home of Carissa’s The Bakery will remain open, as well, acting more as a patisserie than the current space.
At the front of the space, guests will be greeted by an ice cream counter, bakery counter, takeout counter, and barista station, where they can purchase espressos, coffees, ice teas, limeades, and other drinks. The team aims to expand its takeout options to include items like rotisserie chicken, salad, and other seasonal foods. In the back, where the café will be, guests will place their order at a counter by day. In the evenings, however, the café will assume a more formal air, with full table service.
As with her earlier location, Ms. Waechter’s new and improved space will offer her famous pickled rye bread and other assorted breads and pastries; homemade soups; and fresh sandwiches. This location will spearhead a new dessert project, however. The restaurant will make its own gelato in-house. Ms. Waechter will be creating these gelatos with Christine Tovar, the bakery’s production manager and a pastry chef in her own right. Gelatos will also have a local, seasonal bent, like the polenta gelato, made with Stone’s Throw Farm’s corn polenta.
Sixty-eight Newtown Lane, the current home of Carissa’s The Bakery, will remain open and “will be dedicated to everything that we do right now, but really to what Carissa does with her special cakes, pastries,” Lori Chemla said. “And it will act more as a patisserie than the current space. We will have everything that we have available at the current space at the new space.”
The larger footprint will offer room for more expansive projects—Ms. Waechter will be selling her famous pickled rye bread nationally now, and will use the original space for that massive undertaking—but it will also offer some relief. “We just maxxed out as soon as we opened,” Ms. Chemla said of the original space. “We didn’t expect the amount of volume we were going to get at that space.” Like the original bakery, the new space will remain open year-round. “We’ve tried to be a community asset,” Ms. Chemla said. “Everything is thought in terms of a year-round business.”
