In 1969, a Greek family, the Johnides, opened the Old Stove Pub in an 1820 farmhouse in Sagaponack. Their motto—“when you’re fed up with the chic, come to the Greek”—has tickled clientele since JFK Jr. and Billy Joel were regulars. Yet it was also beloved by locals, who typically stay close to home during the summer chaos and venture out in the off-season. As one lifelong resident put it: “The Hamptons is a string of distinct towns, each with its own flavor, shaped by decades of change and a 100-day seasonal economy. There are different groups of people that form this interdependent ecosystem, with categories that overlap: old and new, second homeowner and local.” For a restaurant to feel authentic, it must serve them all.
Enter Max Chodorow, who is taking over the storied steakhouse. The restaurateur’s first spot, Jean’s, opened in 2023 in Manhattan with partner Ashwin Deshmukh. It’s become synonymous with a new era of downtown New York nightlife, and some East Enders fear the same will come to Sagaponack.
Yet Chodorow is a quick draw on several points. The son of Jeffrey Chodorow, who bought the restaurant from former owner Thomas Makos for $4.5 million and is the man behind China Grill, the Asia de Cuba restaurants, and more, he’s been coming to the Hamptons his whole life and knows what wrong looks like: focusing on the stretch between Memorial and Labor Day or firing local staff. He speaks wistfully of venues ripped to shreds in the wrong hands.
He surfaced from his Pennsylvania farm, purchased by his grandfather in the 1970s, for our interview. Since Chodorow took over, the farm has grown 35 acres of food production, with pigs leading what one imagines to be a glorious life in the woods until they become house-made prosciutto. The farm supplies 95 percent of Jean’s produce. At the Old Stove Pub, Chodorow plans to channel the dock-to-table movement to keep locally caught fish local. “The whole Montauk tourist destination just isn’t really what we’re going for. We want to connect with true Hamptonites.”
Chodorow is adamant about how he’ll steward the restaurant. The neon sign must stay, although the name might not. The old pine floors will be refinished, not replaced. “If we wanted to delete history, we should have bought another property.” The famous horse out front may get a tasteful facelift by an undisclosed artist collaborator. “This is something no one knows yet: we may turn the horse into a zebra!” They may even pay homage to the restaurant’s Greek era: “Will we have to have a saganaki? I guess we probably might.”
A buzzy vibe hovers, but Chodorow is keeping mum about his plans ahead of the restaurant’s opening next year. “We do have a lot of wonderful chef friends with amazing concepts in the city who have reached out to do dinners, sort of takeovers of the property,” he teases.
Lifelong Hamptonite James Cruickshank, a friend of Chodorow’s, shared his fantasies for collaborations. “I would love to see Max partner with Richie Ludlow of Ludlow Farms, or Richie King of King’s Farm.” Cruickshank had thoughts on wine as well: “I would love to see it drawn from Wölffer and Channing Daughters, which are right in his backyard.”
Chodorow is far from the first to give a beloved watering hole a facelift and nods to Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson, the Frenchette owners who revamped old-school French bistro Le Veau d’Or back in 2024, as a duo who did it right. “They highlighted the qualities that were great, cleaned up the things that were less than great, and preserved the atmosphere and history. That’s all we intend to do.”
“Off the record” is an oft-mentioned phrase when asking Hamptonites their opinions, maybe because, as one lifelong resident put it, “The Hamptons are the land of ‘no.’” In other words, people are protective and wary of what comes next. In this ever-changing place where one sometimes has to swallow what they didn’t order (see: the new Madewell store in Sag Harbor), Chodorow is leading with yes; as in, I also love this place and want to prove it.
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