Honest Man Hospitality has added a new beverage director to its team, Chimene Macnaughton. She began as the sommelier at Nick & Toni’s last year and was recently promoted to the beverage director position, curating the beverage programs at all properties — Nick & Toni’s, Coche Comedor, Rowdy Hall, Townline BBQ, and La Fondita.
Macnaughton has lived year-round on the East End since a chance summer visit in 2005 extended itself to meet the November start of American Sommelier’s Advanced Viticulture and Vinification course, which she passed at the top of her class in April 2006. Stints at Della Femina, Fresno, The 1770 House, and as a private chef for households in both Sun Valley and East Hampton were the backdrop for her seven year foray into sommelier-led retail.
Macnaughton opened Wainscott Main Wine & Spirits — the East End’s first sommelier-managed fine wine and spirits shop, and the home of her beloved all-levels wine workshops.
She lives in Sag Harbor’s Mount Misery with her photographer husband Craig, and their two NGA racing Greyhounds, Casey Bones and Boaz. We caught up with her to learn more.
Tell us a little about your background.
I’m definitely what’s known as a career “hospitalian.” In my twenties, in San Francisco’s heyday of celebrity chefs and farm-to-table, I began my apprenticeship in all things fine wine.
In 2000, I followed dear friends (a husband/wife chef team) to open our dream together — plāce restaurant in North America’s first ski town — Sun Valley, ID. We were in a Relais et Château Inn, and it was a crash course in the realities of restaurant ownership — the razor-thin margins, the gouge-y landlord, the staffing challenges we face in any seasonal luxury market.
I arrived in East Hampton summer 2005, I had a summer cooking contract with a three-generation family out in Louse Point. I would set up my cutting board so that if I simply looked up, Gardiner’s Island was shining away in front of me, every day … that kitchen island facing the bay sounds to me like so many other first summer stories I’ve heard through the years, all these only-Out East hooks that keep us all here, but truthfully it’s a major reason I am still here. I lived in Springs for all of my years before my husband Craig and I married in 2011, and that same incredible light on the beautiful bay has a powerful hold on me, yet. I cooked privately for a year-round family for many years, as well as stints working the floor at Della Femina, Fresno, and The 1770 House. In January of 2014, I opened Wainscott Main Wine & Spirits, the East End’s first sommelier-led retail shop.
What inspired you to become a sommelier?
Back in the ’90s and especially on the west coast, the restaurant world wasn’t thick with somms the way Manhattan was pre-Covid. People like Rajat Parr and Shelley Lindgren were my peers, they came up in restaurants the same way I did … earning our way through the ranks until eventually we were full time dinner waiters (this at a time when lunch shifts at Boulevard — still Zagat’s #1 in SF — could net you a home loan and a mortgage!) And then promoted equally rapidly through the management ranks.
At that time, there was Larry Stone, MS at Rubicon, and that was the only presence the Court of Masters had, pretty much. Raj trained under Larry, and Shelley was a long-time Captain at Hubert Keller’s neighborhood French icon Fleur de Lys. I worked first for Richard Coraine, then GM at Hawthorne Lane — now Danny Meyer’s COO at Union Square Hospitality Group.
Becoming a sommelier came as a natural part of the style of service being offered in the top fine dining experiences back then — for those of us with a penchant for wine and a brain that maybe needed more challenge than the typical, predictable day-to-day guest-facing service role of even the fanciest restaurant. Waiters didn’t all become somms, but for those of us who slotted into that track, moving toward Wine Director and beyond, it was a very natural progression, and we were supported by our chefs and management colleagues.
The romance and drama of the sommelier certification process is a relatively new phenomenon, whereas most of us “old school” sommeliers (on both coasts) came up in more of a classic apprentice-journeyman model and feel a sort of parental pride for the way the role has taken flight in the last decade plus.
You’ve curated the beverage program for Nick & Toni’s, Coche Comedor, Rowdy Hall, Townline BBQ and La Fondita. What can guests expect?
Stepping into fully fledged programs like NT’s and Rowdy, with both BBQ and Coche having already established their requisite specialties (whiskey and agave, respectively) makes for a full plate plus seconds when I let myself daydream about the coming season and beyond. It’s a balancing act of maintaining everything we’ve built as a group and continuing to innovate and invite discovery. The deep cellar at Nick & Toni’s with its bottle-aged trophies and treasures, alongside the liquid value proposition that is Rowdy Hall.
Guests can expect all the restaurants to keep shining out their unique “personalities” as I aim to honor their rich histories and culture through their assortments. We are working on better focus in the individual cocktail programs — I like there to be some dynamism there — for things to move and evolve seasonally. An eye toward industry trends (only the delicious ones!) and hopefully way more fun in the specialty cocktail lists throughout. Longtime and loyal guests can look forward to some tailoring and improvements to glassware throughout the group, new Oaxacan discoveries on the back bar at Coche, the hardest-to-get whiskies offered at Townline. And for locals who’ve been missing wine-based events, and the all-levels workshops I’ve led in past — I’m on it! #WineWednesdays are in the hopper. Stay tuned.
What brought you to Honest Man Hospitality?
After my tenure in retail came to a close in spring of 2020, HM’s Director of Operations Christy Cober and Nick & Toni’s GM Laurie Tomasino called me in to talk about some roles they were thinking about for HM’s flagship as New York began to reopen from the first Covid-19 shutdown. From there, Christy and I continued talking, we met with her partners to broaden the conversation, and she and I really began the work of shaping this new role of group-wide Beverage Director in earnest. In the interim, I came aboard in a consulting capacity, taking over the programs at Nick and Toni’s summer of 2020, as well as pitching in managing Coche Comedor while we recruited and hired a new GM there.
By taking our time to design and craft this director position, the partners and I feel that we’re all gathered ’round the same drafting table, and I’ve never been more enthused and encouraged as we begin to sketch the bright future of guest experience together.
What are a few of your personal favorite cocktails at each of the restaurants?
I love “La Medicina Latina” at NT’s, it’s a simple stunner that I discovered when home in LA back in 2009: Mezcal plus Tequila with house-made pineapple syrup and fresh grated ginger. The counterpoint to this might be the “Smoke & Embers” at Coche, another skillfully balanced Mezcal-rita complete with Oaxacan worm salt on the rim.
At Townline BBQ, I love what Ryan Brown is doing with whiskies from the Sazerac portfolio — he always has a Weller’s whiskey in play — the “Winter on the Cape” was a fantastic interplay of wheated whiskey and cranberry; precisely underpinned by a homemade spiced syrup. At Rowdy Hall, I know there’s always a classic Negroni to draw me in, but it’s awfully hard to argue with a perfectly poured Guinness from the cleanest taps in Suffolk County.
You opened Wainscott Main Wine & Spirits on Montauk Highway. Tell us about that.
I answered an ad! Looking back on that time in late 2013, it’s pretty clear that my partners and I were meant to be. I was coming off of a long stint cooking for a nationally recognized interior designer, so that aesthetic very much informed my planning for the space — everything from the layout, to the flow, to the all-white interior, and the pine and birch custom shelving, to the logo and branding. It was a total labor of love and I am so, so proud of what WM means to the community now.
I really pushed in with my suppliers on the often arbitrary and always unfair idea that certain wines and spirits were somehow dedicated to restaurants only — leaving the retail consumer shut out of the most sought-after and collectible wines, for example. We weren’t unique in this pushback to “get” these hard-fought allocations, rather part of a movement as more and more somms crossed over to retail, but these relationships with producers the world over inform Wainscott’s assortment to this day, and smart collectors know there they’ll find all the tippy-top names in Burgundy, Rhône, Napa, Piemonte, and on and on.
For seven years, right up to March 11, 2020, we provided #WineWednesday workshops — certification-level classes to the East End. Winemakers, Master Sommeliers, importers, wine educators all came to the tasting tables to share their joy with our loyal students.
What are a few of your favorite local wine or spirit companies that stand out to you?
I’m obsessed with the spirit of discovery and innovation at Channing Daughters. Christopher Tracy’s way of thinking about his beloved terroir is novel and individualistic without being unmarketably esoteric. He and I have always mind-melded on the simple theory that wine should be delicious — first, last, always! I also love what the McCall family is doing on the North Fork — did you know that there’s 11 acres planted to pinot noir up there in Cutchogue? Yeah. News to me too, but I seem to find the Burgundy-obsessed wherever I roam, and Russ McCall is definitely that.
I’m super-stoked that we have a world-class distillery right in our backyard now — Sagaponack Farm Distillery is doing wonderfully spirited things for the East End … the Foster family is generations old, and siblings Dean and Marilee are well known in our local food community (the best potato chips!).
We love to weave their products into our assortments — an aquavit, and the newly released aged rye are standouts alongside their well-established potato and cucumber vodkas. We’re impatiently awaiting an over-proofed vodka — the key to Nick & Toni’s beloved house-made Limoncello recipe.
What do you love most about the East End?
From San Francisco, to Sun Valley, and now to this fantastic place … each offers this heavenly, heart-stopping cant of pristine light.
I’m married to a photographer, so we’re here to “live in beauty,” as abstract as that may sound on the page … It’s very much become Craig’s stomping grounds. His backdrops — the ocean at Beach Lane, the bay at Maidstone Park, the many and myriad trails and vistas in between — they belong to him and our dogs in a way that keeps whispering to me that we are home.
What got me here is a story I’ve heard so many tell now that I’m here nearly 20 years … my version of “I came here for one summer and I’m still here!” But I stay because my husband makes this home.
Like many women who’ve built a career in hospitality management, I’ve sometimes found it impossible to have all of life’s “spinning plates” humming along in unison, but this stellar opportunity with Honest Man in this singular place we struggle and strive to call home feels like just that to me. I’m so grateful to be that right person at the right time for my group — a feeling that may come only once in a career — and I’m so excited for what we are going to build together.
