Plum Tarts and Tasmanian Truffles, Maybe, but Caviar, Nyet!

By Fred Bruning

July 13, 2025

In the Hamptons this summer, Japanese melons are selling for as much as $400. Lobster salad is $100 per pound and the entitled East End vacationer may obtain a few ounces of caviar for more than your next car payment.

Time out.

Have you ever eaten caviar – salt-cured fish eggs, preferably roe of the sturgeon?

Sometimes you wonder where these ideas get started.

Out in the Caspian Sea, an ancient Russian fisherman lands a sturgeon.

“Otlichnyy,” he shouts – “excellent.”

Maybe a nice filet tonight, or big-time rubles back at the dock.

Then our alert seaman spots the eggs and at once gauges market potential.

“We pitch this stuff to the aristocracy,” he tells his wife. “Oligarchs eat anything.”

The new delicacy he labels “caviar” (Russian translation: “lotsa’ luck’’) and, several centuries later it’s a sensation bringing hundreds in the Hamptons.

I tried caviar once.

This was in a period of adventurous eating.

I sampled a fried grasshopper at, I think, a display of exotic foods at Macy’s, 34^th Street, and was not above risking five or six sliders at White Castle. Long before my current vegetarian status, I might have enjoyed a bite or two of blutwurst (ach!), my father’s favorite, and, who knows, could be I even got a takeout tongue on rye, plenty mustard, at the kosher deli.

As for caviar, friends, do not lament an incomplete life if you have not yet had the thrill.

One time, when the four kids were little, I saw a recipe for “garlic soup.”

We served it for dinner and the children immediately staged a job action.

“Tastes like the ocean,” cried our 10-year-old daughter, and my wife, Wink, and I, offering little resistance, said, oh, all right, forget about it, we’ll have English muffin pizzas again. Loudly, the four rejoiced.

Similar was my reaction when, at some fancy affair, I sampled caviar during appetizer hour.

“Huh?” was my response.

Brave gourmands will spread it on blini or toast points and marvel at its subtle seawater overtones. I’ll hope for mozzarella sticks.

Excuse the detour.

Let’s get back to business.

Good eatin’, Hamptons-style.

The President, Trump, said he would lower grocery costs – Day One, wasn’t it? – and while we await that glorious moment of relief, no one could hold POTUS to account for the kind of epic pricing possible only where millionaires queue up for plum tarts and Tasmanian winter truffles.

Shopping in Southampton is not exactly a trip to Trader Joe’s.

What?! No pink or gold oyster mushrooms? No halibut salad or cappuccino crunch cold brew coffee. What gives?

We glimpse another world.

Such abundance! Such affluence! Such fun!

All this was discussed in a recent New York Times front page story exploring the Hamptons summer foodie scene.

The writer, Dionne Searcey, noted, nicely, that the season of the $400 Japanese melon coincides with the ascendancy of Democratic-Socialist mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, who is suggesting New York City run its own grocery stores to give struggling families a break. The proposal may one day prevail in the five boroughs but has not yet taken hold Out East.

A favorite moment in the article comes when Searcey quotes one East Ender who says she just wishes there would be a little more love on social media regarding prices in the Hamptons – that the tone, for goodness sake, would “rise above the snippety.”

And, yes, by all means, non-Hamptonites, let’s behave. Resist envy. Keep perspective. Practice restraint. Slow down on the snippety.

This is a message mainly to myself.

Who – occasionally – doesn’t want to be rich and spending the summer in some swell preserve with twinkling lights and an elegant crowd and endless rounds of everything imaginable? Who does not want more?

Shake it off.

Sometimes Wink makes a cold dish with chopped tomatoes, garlic, red onion, pinto beans, black-eyed peas, jalapeno, green pepper, corn kernels, avocado and a sprinkle of chopped cilantro. It’s called Cowboy Caviar.

Economical, healthy, delicious – and good news for the sturgeon.

Previous Invisible Ink posts at: https://fredbruning.substack.com/archive