Publication: Conde Nast Traveler
Date: June, 2002
Section: "Word of Mouth: Greenport, New York"
Author: arah Bernard
Forget the Hamptons and head to Greenport, New York. You'll find a new spa hotel, some excellent wines, and fewer crowds-for now.
The Bed
This summer, the Greenporter Hotel and Spa makes its debut as the first boutique hotel on Long Island's North Fork. The 1950s motor lodge has been transformed into 15 modern rooms with Frette sheets and Annick Goutal goodies in the bath. The day spa's beauty products use ingredients from local vineyards (631-477-0066; doubles, $175-$275).
The Restaurant
The Greenporter's La Cuvée Wine Bar & French Bistro stocks wines to complement everything from an open-faced croque monsieur to steak frites. Try the wine tastings held twice a month on Sunday nights (631-477-0066; entrées, $16-$22).
Publication: The New York Times
Date: September 15, 2002
Author: Richard Jay Scholem
Link to original: A LA CARTE; In Greenport...
A wine bar on the North Fork? What could be more obvious? Put it in Greenport, and combine it with a slick little restaurant, and you're in business.
Yet it took Deborah Rivera Pittorino, a summer resident from Manhattan, to think of it, and more important, to get it done. She and her husband, William, bought a 1950's motel in the heart of the Island's wine country and opened La Cuvée, a glossy, high-tech bistro serving light, contemporary dishes with a decidedly European spin (and occasional Asian and Latino overtones).
Ms. Pittorino, a well-traveled, self-described ''international businesswoman'' who is the restaurant's executive chef, used her own favorite recipes for the menu. The restaurant, which is in the Greenporter Hotel & Spa at 326 Front Street (631-477-0066), seats 80 (30 inside, 50 on the balcony). Because it opened last October, long after the summer people had departed, its debut did not get the attention it would have during the season. Even now, La Cuvée is open with a full menu only four days a week, Thursday through Sunday, and Ms. Pittorino, an accomplished chef despite her lack of formal training, is on the scene for just three of them, Friday through Sunday.
There are at least as many salads and sandwiches as entrees on the menu. Fashionable, colorful presentations are the norm, and most of the well-priced wines -- 25 local selections, and 30 international -- can be ordered by the glass. Dishes like Stilton cheese mousse ($7), the croque de la mer sandwich ($13), salade niçoise ($17) and striped bass wrapped in banana leaves and poached in a coconut milk and lemon grass broth ($21) are not commonplace in Greenport.
Neither is the décor. Its zinc and marble bar, with brushed steel chairs, polished stainless-steel outdoor tables, corner fireplace, cluster of seashells on every table, yellow teardrop lighting, canary yellow walls and the fabric canopy over its outdoor deck mark La Cuvée as a hip, contemporary destination.
Superb starters were that Stilton mousse ($7); the thick, full-bodied soups ($7); the salad of greens, beets and chèvre ($8); the traditional Caesar salad ($7); the fresh, delicate fried calamari ($8); and especially the seared North Fork scallops ($9).
Both the tomato and roasted pepper bisque, splashed with basil oil, and the summer squash soup -- chicken broth, a white wine reduction and a whisper of cream -- were like drinking liquid summer.
The scallops were a triumph: three sea scallops around a hill of vibrant black hijiki, a type of seaweed, seasoned with shichimi togarashi, a Japanese blend that includes ground chili peppers and dried orange peel.
Most of the main courses more than passed muster. Only a large bowl of pasta verde ($16) doused with far too much homemade pesto and the limp, greasy French fries that accompanied an otherwise exemplary prime sirloin burger fell short.
A generous serving of homemade lobster ravioli ($18) held chunks of meat and was blanketed with a lush lobster coulis. The fresh linguine ($19) with fresh shrimp, salmon and tuna came with sautéed local tomatoes in a white wine reduction, and the croque-monsieur ($9) had an unexpected pocket of enriching béchamel sauce between its melted Gruyère cheese and warm grilled ham.
The service was well meaning but unpolished and less than knowing, a problem hardly confined to La Cuvée. Finding and keeping an experienced restaurant staff on the East End, especially on the North Fork, has always been a problem. One night, all three courses of this elegant food were eaten with the same fork since silverware wasn't replaced nor were all the used plates removed (one remained through dessert).
On the other hand, some dishes disappeared before everyone at the table had finished eating. One night two diners received different menus (one was outdated), the swinging doors to the steamy kitchen were left open, and the breadbasket was not replenished. I never could get an explanation (not that I'm complaining) of why $5, $7 and $9 glasses of wine are listed on the bill at $4.61, $6.45 and $8.29. In mid-August, the first night a peach crepe was offered as a special, we ordered it only to be told, ''Sorry, we don't have any peaches.''
Redemption comes at meal's end. The husky cream-free chocolate mousse ($8) was firm and rich, and the warm, refined French bread pudding ($6), alive with rum, raisins and vanilla under cinnamon and real whipped cream, was a winner. The towering profiteroles ($8) with their Belgian chocolate sauce and melting vanilla ice cream were dreamy.
Publication: The New York Times
Date: April 12, 2002
Section: Escapades
Author: Terry Trucco
Link to original: HAVENS; A House Hunt...
In August 2000, Deborah Rivera Pittorino and her husband, William Pittorino, attended a wedding in Jamesport, a tiny town on the North Fork of Long Island, and fell in love with the area's relaxed beauty. ''It looked more like a New England fishing village than Long Island,'' said Ms. Pittorino, who owns a management consulting and executive search firm in New York called the Succession Group.
House prices in the region were considerably less than on the South Fork, where the couple had been looking without success for a second home. The area is home to the celebrity-stuffed Hamptons, and starter houses can cost $1 million. But while the Pittorinos were pleased with the North Fork's lower prices, they had little luck in their search.
They had even less luck finding a place to stay for their weekend house hunts. ''There were only bed and breakfasts,'' Ms. Pittorino said.
After one particularly frustrating day, their broker announced he had no more houses to show them, only a motel. ''A light went on in my head,'' Ms. Pittorino said.
The Greenporter Motel was a downtrodden, split-level 1950's motor lodge with moldy shag carpeting and insulated ceilings. ''It was like the Bates Motel,'' Ms. Pittorino recalled. But it had a superb location in the center of Greenport, a cozy nautical village near the North Fork's outer tip. When she closed her eyes, Ms. Pittorino could envision a big green lawn and a swimming pool with lap lanes where the parking lot stood. ''I just had to have the place,'' she said.
Her first impulse was to live there on weekends and invite all her friends to visit. ''After all, we'd been looking for a summer house,'' she said. But her business instincts quickly took over as she realized she had the ideal makings, and market, for a boutique hotel. Though she had no experience running a hotel, she always sought out the choicest boutique hotels when she traveled and had occasionally thought of owning one, she said, ''the way some people dream of writing a novel.''
Ms. Pittorino, who is 41, does not procrastinate. She bought the motel in October 2000 and just nine months later opened the Greenporter Hotel, a stylish 15-room lodging that retains the building's plucky Sputnik-era facade. A bistro and wine bar, specializing in Long Island varietals, opened last October. A spa, conference center and 13 additional guest rooms are under construction.
Mr. Pittorino, a former gym teacher and bar manager who is the chief financial officer for Succession Group, handles the hotel's day-to-day finances. Ms. Pittorino also hired a graduate of the Cornell University hotel school to manage the hotel.
The old motel was in no way a historic landmark, so Ms. Pittorino, who bought it for $700,000 and has invested an extra $4 million, was free to revamp it. An architect, Wendy Evans Joseph, gutted the building, then devised airy surroundings and furnishings with witty mid-century modern flourishes, like curvaceous storage units and butter yellow molded acrylic chairs on spidery metal legs in each room. Rooms, which start at $190 a night on weekends and $145 on weekdays, also have hardwood floors (no moldy carpeting), sea-blue area rugs woven in Kashmir and silvery metal Venetian blinds.
The bistro offers more than 45 wines by the glass. An amateur chef, Ms. Pittorino devised a simple menu of steaks, salads and hot sandwiches, matching wines with each entree to play up the hotel's proximity to the roughly 25 vineyards that make up Long Island's wine country. The hotel arranges tours of vineyards.
Families with children are also attracted by Greenport, which has a large park with a carousel and a deep harbor ideal for boating but not much night life. ''The area is a lot quieter than the South Fork,'' she said.
For now, Ms. Pittorino and her husband stay in a hotel room when they visit each weekend. Come summer, however, they'll forfeit their room to the paying guests.
So once again, the Pittorinos are house-hunting, with the stipulation that they rent a place that's not far from the Greenporter Hotel.
Publication: New York Magazine
Date: May 13, 2002
Author: Beth Landman Keil
Link to original: Beauty and the Beach
While many day spas have opened on the East End, Gurney's Inn has long been the only place on Long Island where you could check in for a spa visit and stay overnight. Now the North Fork's year-old Greenporter, a converted fifties' motel with retro accents, is planning to debut its own destination spa. Funkier and smaller than Gurney's, the Greenporter will offer the standard array of massages, from hot-stone to couples' sessions, and will play on its proximity to neighboring vineyards by featuring vinotherapy treatments (exfoliations, lymphatic drainage wraps) that use grape seeds. Medi-spa treatments like Botox and collagen injections will also be available as well as yoga retreats. Until the spa opens later this season, you can content yourself with the hotel's thirteen additional rooms (available in June), and La Cuvée, the French bistro and wine bar, which opened last fall (631-477-0066; rates from $190).
Publication: Food & Wine
Author: Richard Nalley
Link to original: Fact Sheet: Wine Country
This 15-room boutique hotel and spa is a 1950s motel made hip. Located in the "un-Hamptons" of Long Island's North Fork, it is so local-vintner oriented that the hotel restaurant's wine list existed before its menu (631-477-0066).
Publication: Hamptons Magazine
Author: Paige Herman
Though we love our jaunts to the North Fork, the quaint factor leaves us itching for the chic stuff we adore about the southern utensil.
Enter The Greenporter Hotel & Spa, where minimalist styling meets the charm of Greenport, and guests can enjoy Long Island's wine country and beaches while staying in one of the 15 well-appointed rooms designed by I.M. Pei-trained Wendy Evans Joseph.
Other property amenities include landscaped gardens surrounding a heated pool and Jacuzzi, spa services on the premises, and the lovely La Cuvée wine bar and French bistro. Just what the doctor ordered for weekends away from the Hamptons.
Publication: Wallpaper
Author: David Kaufman
Like tech-heavy stock portfolios or top-floor Tribeca triplexes, a second home in the Hamptons was a potent symbol of success in 1990s New York. But thanks to a spate of recent high-profile hijinks Long Island's south shore will likely be a less-luxe landscape this season.
This year, we predict Gotham's most glamorous will steer clear of the media-mad mayhem that has become the Hamptons scene and book a room at The Greenporter Hotel and Spa across the Peconic Bay. Built in the 1950s as a roadside motel, The Greenporter was the type of place where guests reserved rooms by the hour (cash only, of course) and shag carpeting was the swankiest in-room amenity.
Nearly half a century and more than $6m later, the hotel has been elegantly upgraded by its new owners, husband and wife team Deborah Rivera and William Pittorino. Working with Manhattan-based architect Wendy Joseph - a former I.M. Pei protégée - The Greenporter was re-clad with blue-stone walkways, white birch floors, lime-coloured walls and 15 rooms ready-made for an easy urban escape.
A lap pool replaced the car park, and an airy restaurant, La Cuvée - which with 60 wines from every corner of the globe makes up for Greenport's skimpy nightlife - did away with the dreary reception area. And, with an outdoor jacuzzi a newly unveiled spa and a fence of opaque fiberglass panels to keep out prying eyes, this east coast hideaway exudes potential nocturnal raughtiness.
The 1990s may be over on the south shore, but the fun is just beginning across the bay.
Publication: Travel and Liesure
Date: June, 2002
Link to original: 30 Great Inns
Searching for that perfect hideaway? We combed the nation for the best undiscovered inns and b&b's and found something for every taste. From mountaintop lodges to beachside cottages, desert oases and wine-country manors, here are 30 of our new favorites -- plus five all-time classics worth the splurge.
The burgeoning wine region of Long Island's North Fork had a noticeable lack of top-notch hotels until last summer, when help arrived in an unexpected form: the Greenporter, fashioned out of a 1957 motor court in the maritime village of Greenport.
A $5 million renovation has created a clever tribute to Mid-Century Modern style—and a fresh alternative to the typical wine-country inn. With floors of bright maple, bare walls painted celadon, and sleek aluminum furnishings, the 15 guest rooms are all about cool minimalism. Annick Goutal bath products are a nice touch, as is the heated outdoor pool.
While Greenport is only a short ferry ride from Shelter Island and an hour's drive from the Hamptons, wineries are the real draw: two dozen are clustered on the North Fork. (The hotel's La Cuvée Bistro & Wine Bar has 45 wines by the glass, many of them local.)
Publication: Wine Spectator
Author: Matthew DeBord
Link to original: La Cuvée Wine Bar...
Visitors to the charming fishing village of Greenport, N.Y., are accustomed to thinking of the place as short on big-city attitude and long on snug streets dotted with mildly irrelevant shops.
No more. Because out here on Long Island's North Fork, a design-conscious boutique hotel has been added to the weathered trawlers, the wheeling seagulls and the candle-wax peddlers. Just a quick drive from Orient Point, the easternmost stop on the North Fork, lodgings worthy of the Sunset Strip now occupy space alongside demure houses and their flee-the-bustle denizens.
The North Fork, home to 19 wineries, is gaining upscale cachet that far exceeds its former life as a sleepy strand of potato farms. For some time it has been pegged the "un-Hamptons," for its indifference to the moneyed vacation enclave south across Peconic Bay. But the economics of wine, and the allure of the lifestyle associated with vineyards, demand that the region become hip in a hurry. It's hard to be Napa East if visitors can't find a hotel with phones in the rooms.
La Cuvée -- featuring 45 wines by the glass, with upwards of 20 of them from Long Island -- is Exhibit A. Attached to the still-under-construction Greenporter Hotel and Spa, the wine bar, which opened last fall, is an airy den of minimalist mod. Architect Wendy Evans Joseph, a former I.M. Pei associate, has successfully carried over her design concept from the hotel, an updated version of an Eisenhower-era motor lodge.
A rectangular zinc bar takes center stage, with aluminum tables and stiletto-legged, curved-plastic chairs arranged as a bright aesthetic chorus. The space is lit by sun through large windows on every side, at night by inverted-tulip fixtures of translucent goldenrod. The color scheme combines a vaguely lurid yellow-green with glistening metal and toasty wood.
It's a far cry from the familiar Greenport tableau of curling shingles and salt-scarred fishermen, as well as from the unsavory property locals knew before the appearance of Deborah Rivera, a 41-year-old management consultant, who is masterminding the project.
"It was a motel where you rented rooms by the hour," she said. "And very affordable when we purchased it." Rivera and her husband and partner, William Pittorino, paid $700,000 for the low-slung love shack two years ago and have since invested close to $6 million in a two-phase renovation. (Phase one was the 15-room hotel and La Cuvée; phase two is the spa and 13 more rooms.)
Rivera, who was raised in a globetrotting Foreign Service family, and whose job has often kept her on the road, looked to create the type of lodging she favors in her own travels. Her design influences are obvious. "We were extremely inspired by Ian Schrager," she said, referring to the hotelier's aggressively hip boutique properties in New York, Los Angeles and Miami. "I'm building the place I've been dreaming of staying at my whole life," she added.
To this end, La Cuvée is vital. Despite the construction-site aspect of the surrounding hotel, it already feels like a vibrant hub. Greenport may be a welcome escape from the Manhattan hustle, but it's also pretty snoozy, with few places to hang out. At La Cuvée, however, you can leave behind the mud-stained garden clogs and break out the Manolos before bellying up to the bar or traipsing out to the dining terrace overlooking the town's main drag, Front Street.
"Our customers are upwardly mobile local Greenporters," Rivera said. "But also weekenders who live in Manhattan and who don't want to end their evening at 8, when everything else closes." For night owls, La Cuvée is a godsend; it stays open until 2 a.m.
Rivera hopes to make The Greenporter and La Cuvée a clubhouse for nomadic trendsetters and the region's rapidly multiplying vinerati. Château Margaux director Paul Pontailler, who has been consulting for Raphael winery, and Bayard chef Eberhard Muller, have been recent guests.
But a lively meal at La Cuvée won't break the bank. For example, the 1999 Macari Vineyards Unfiltered Chardonnay is only $6 a glass, and a satisfying $13 marinated tuna tartare is accompanied by a bracing, lime-streaked 2000 Paumanok Vineyards Riesling ($8). If you're looking beyond the North Fork, the menu offers a frequently international -- but never Californian -- wine choice to pair with every dish, including cheeses.
At the moment, Rivera is acting as executive chef, with the help of two line cooks. The French-inflected, bistro-style menu encompasses a sampling of salads, five entrées and half a dozen sandwiches and classic "croques" (Monsieur, Madame, "de la Mer" and vegetarian). Specials change often, to keep regulars contented.
It's a ton of work for a woman who continues to hold down a day job, but for Rivera, it's an unequaled passion. "I've been into wine since I was 17," she said.
And she's not through yet. Rivera and her husband plan to develop other trendsetting properties on the North Fork in the future. Now if they could just do something about the tractor jams.