Cedric & Ochi Vongerichten Expand Their Culinary Footprint While Giving Back to the Local Community

As a scion of culinary royalty, Cedric Vongerichten was probably destined to become a chef. But Cedric will tell you that his father, the internationally renowned restaurateur Jean-Georges Vongerichten, never pushed him to join the family business.

“My father didn’t want to force me into [restaurant life],” he says. “It was actually the opposite. He would say, ‘Do something else – this is difficult.’ Maybe that was reverse psychology, but it made me want to be a part of the business even more.”

Vongerichten is taking a similar approach with his own sons, aged 12 and 14.

“It’s a lot of long hours and a lot of physical and mental stress,” he says of a life spent cooking and serving world-class food. “I want them to come to this because of their own passion.”

For now at least, it looks like a new generation of Vongerichtens are indeed poised to follow in the culinary footsteps of their father and grandfather.

In fact, Cedric’s oldest son is officially on the payroll at Vongerichten’s pop-up restaurant in East Hampton, where South Fork residents and visitors have had the chance to experience a local version of the chef’s signature blend of French and Indonesian cuisine.

The pop-up, which Cedric runs with his wife, Ochi, is called Wayan & Ma•dé Out East. Open through the end of August, the Hamptons location is an amalgam of the couple’s two popular downtown New York City restaurants on Spring Street in NoLita. (Wayan, which means “first born” in Balinese, opened in 2019. Ma•dé, which means “second born,” opened four years later right next door.)

This summer, the Wayan & Ma•dé pop-up in East Hampton has been operating out of the space formerly occupied by Sunset Harbor Restaurant at EHP Marina, a waterfront resort on Three Mile Harbor.

In his temporary East End outpost, Vongerichten serves up a selection of often-spicy favorites from his two NoLita restaurants. Can’t-miss dishes include lobster noodles with black pepper butter and Thai basil, a slow-cooked butterfish with calamansi miso and green asparagus, and charred pork ribs with a soy tamarind glaze and Turkish chile peppers (aka, “urfa biber”).

Not only is Vongerichten the principal of CV Restaurant Group, an expanding collection of upscale eateries in the United States and abroad, he also runs the kitchen at Perry St, the West Village bastion of casually elegant dining created by his father in 2005. (The CV Group’s most recent addition to its portfolio came last December, when it opened Wayan Aspen in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.)

As immersed as he and his family are in their many commercial culinary interests, Vongerichten may be even more proud of his work with City Harvest.

“I don’t know the exact date when we started, but for quite some time now, we’ve been participating in these various events and raising money for City Harvest in New York City and the Hamptons,” Vongerichten says. “And eventually, we became part of their chef’s group and got much more involved on a regular basis.”

Founded in 1982 by Helen verDuin Palit, City Harvest has rescued more than a billion pounds of food and distributed it to families in need. The organization now operates the largest food rescue and delivery network in New York. Its green and white trucks move through the five boroughs seven days a week, making their way to City Harvest’s own “MobileMarkets,” as well as food pantries, soup kitchens and improvised distribution points tucked into church basements or community centers. To many struggling New York families, City Harvest often means the difference between an empty table and a nutritious dinner.

Vongerichten notes that working with City Harvest is not only a great way for restaurateurs to give back to the communities they serve, it’s also an essential lifeline for the less fortunate.

“We’re in the restaurant industry – this is what we do,” he says. “My wife is involved, our kids are involved. It’s very rewarding to help someone feed themselves and their families.”

“It’s very challenging for City Harvest right now,” Vongerichten adds. The new [government] regulations are definitely affecting their funding – so we need to help even more.”While Cedric commutes back and forth between his family’s homes in New York City and Montauk during the Summer, Ochi manages front-of-house operations at the couple’s Wayan & Ma•dé pop-up, which means she and her sons spend the lion’s share of their Summer on the East End.

Cedric says that he and Ochi have been thinking seriously about emulating many of their New York City culinary peers and opening up a more permanent eatery in the Hamptons. Should they decide to take that plunge, would they gravitate all the way out to Montauk? Or would they opt to set up shop in a more populous area a bit further west?

“Originally, I think we were looking to Montauk,” he says. “But as we’ve done more in East Hampton, it seems more attractive to have a business there because it’s so centralized. You have people coming out from Sag Harbor, Bridgehampton, even Southampton. People from Montauk can easily go [to East Hampton]. But for people from Southampton, the drive to Montauk might feel like it’s a little bit too far.”