Ina Garten's Favorite Pizza Spot In The Hamptons

If you're planning a trip back East or you simply live nearby, you might want to check in on Ina Garten's Instagram. She's been posting a series with some of her favorite places in the Long Island enclave of the Hamptons. In her third installment, she revealed her favorite pizza spot, found in the small hamlet of Amagansett. Fini is a slice shop on Main Street, which, according to the Barefoot Contessa, serves the best pizza around, and she's "obsessed with their white pizza" (via Instagram).

The restaurant serves thin, Brooklyn style pizza by the slice or by the pie. It's easy to understand Garten's preference for the white pizza, which skips the tomato sauce for layers of mozzarella, fontina, and parmesan cheese. The result is a gooey, creamy flavor bomb, served with a sliced lemon. The citrus is just right for cutting through the richness of the cheesy combo. One slice costs a pricey $5.50 while an entire pie will set you back $36.

Garten has been consistent with her love of white pizzas. In 2018, she declared the Brussels sprouts cacio e pepe pizza at Martina Pizzeria in NYC to be her favorite (per Instagram); however, the restaurant closed the following year. She also features her own recipe for white pizza with arugula in her cookbook "Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics," where hers is made with goat cheese along with fontina and mozzarella, and a lemony vinaigrette dresses the greens that are sprinkled on top.

The first Fini location opened in 2022 in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg before coming to the Hamptons in 2023, then adding a third location that same year in Brooklyn's Barclays Center Plaza. Restaurateur and owner Sean Feeney is known for his previous ventures, the Italian restaurants Lilia and Misi, which he co-owns with chef Missy Robbins. The Amagansett location that Ina Garten frequents is housed in the previous space of Astro's, another well-loved pizzeria that had been there since the 1970s, which closed in 2021.

While aficionados debate endlessly as to whether New York City pizza is the best, Fini has undoubtedly brought a taste of authentic NYC to the posh area about 100 miles to the east of the five boroughs. The restaurant serves the iconic thin and foldable slices, and it also offers Sicilian pizza, with its notably thicker, doughy crust. Aside from the sauceless white pizza, Fini's other varieties feature San Marzano tomato sauce and chunks, among other special touches. The tomato pie, for example, comes topped with garlic breadcrumbs and Calabrian oil. Other unique options include the long hot pepper and shallot pizza, and the grandma pie.

The difference between grandma pizza and the standard New York slice is, first and foremost, their shapes. While NYC pizza is the usual triangular shape, grandma pizza is almost always cut into squares or rectangles. It has a denser crust too — although it's crispier and not as thick as Sicilian.

Fittingly, grandma pizza is believed to have originated in Long Island, where Italian immigrant grandmothers are said to have made their traditional pizza recipes using what was available to them in their newfound environment. Grandma pizza is often made with the sauce on top of the cheese, rather than the usual other way around. It, too, can be made without sauce for a white version.

Along with the regular NYC style pizza, white pizza is also a very common option you'll find throughout the state. There are a variety of ways of making it, all of which riff off of the original Italian pizza bianca. While the Fini white pizza that Ina Garten is so fond of features fontina cheese, it's more typically made with ricotta. Garlicky greens like spinach or broccoli rabe are tasty additions, and seafood lovers might want to try it with clams — though white clam pizza is more of a New Haven, Connecticut invention.

If you're indecisive, you can try both at Lombardi's, the first U.S. pizzeria. The Manhattan staple, which first opened in 1905, serves a white pizza with mozzarella, ricotta, and Romano cheeses, along with garlic and basil. While there, you can also try their famous clam pie. It's made with three dozen clams, garlic, Romano, black pepper, and comes topped with fresh parsley and lemon to finish it off with.