Brunch Is Back At Lulu Kitchen & Bar

“There are really no brunch spots that hit all the notes here on the East End,” says Steven Jauffrineau, managing partner of Lulu Kitchen & Bar in Sag Harbor. “So we started focusing on what we thought a ‘proper’ brunch spot in the Hamptons should consist of.”

The restaurant, which has established itself as one of Sag Harbor’s busiest year-round outposts, has leaned into the concept of a long, languorous Sunday brunch. Served from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the slower day of the weekend, the meal is truly a hybridized meal: part breakfast, part lunch, for sure, but maybe part dinner, too, with a savory, compelling menu that feels — to this ex-New Yorker, at least — a lot like one of those day-into-night meals at Balthazar in the mid-2000s.

Not long ago, I stepped into brunch for myself to see what the restaurant had to deliver. When was the last time I had eaten brunch in an actual restaurant, anyway? I couldn’t quite remember.

My husband, two sons and I ambled in at 3 p.m., at a time closer, in truth, to dinner than to breakfast. In college, I often ate brunch well into late afternoon, and emerged from restaurants after the sun had turned bruise purple.

During brunch happy hour, a selection of cocktails — bloody Marys, mimosas, bellinis and certain wines by the glass — are available for $9. I took advantage of a spicy bloody Mary, garnished with a celery spear, lemon and oil-cured olive. A warm puck of bread, baked in house, came with lemon-yellow olive oil for dipping.

Recalling my Balthazar days, I ordered the Oyster Paradise: four pieces each of the Peeko, Eel Harbor, Beau Soleil and Montauk Pearl oysters, served with cocktail sauce and mignonette.

Next came the battle of the tartares. The big-eye tuna tartare (which is available in an appetizer- and entrée-sized portion) arrived stacked from a ring mold, atop avocados and mixed with cucumbers and a harissa-tahini mayonnaise, a smoked paprika tuile placed precariously on top. A hefty steak tartare, umami-rich with a bone marrow aioli, was the counterpoint, made piquant by capers and a bright truffled herb salad.

But the piece de resistance came from the wood oven, which I think is the point of Lulu, if you think about it. It is, after all, at the center of the restaurant. To walk to any single seat in the dining room, you either must pass it or look at it. And, naturally, you can’t help but smell it. The dinner menu is driven by the wood oven, and though brunch is less of a smoky endeavor, the oven still remains responsible for a dish that I think lies at the heart of Lulu’s brunch: the khachapuri.

A traditional Georgian dish made from dough filled with cheese that is topped with a runny egg, Lulu’s version comes with a yogurt sauce, fresh pickles and a chimichurri sauce on the side. The point is to stir the runny yolk into the raclette cheese until the mixture becomes one, tear off the bread from the corners, and then stack the pickles, or sauces, or both, on top, wedging corners of carb and fat into your mouth.

It is satisfying on all counts, salty and crunchy and soft and pliant, a generally pleasing dish that skirts breakfast and lunch and dinner in a way that only a few perfect dishes truly can.

“I think, in the end, what really makes Lulu’s brunch special is all the families who come in,” general manager Joshua Fishbein says. “We often have three generations at one table, eating, drinking and laughing as if they were in their own living room.”

Leaning back into my booth, with no particular place to be on a Sunday, I could see exactly what he meant.