Sett Coffee

Coffee, matcha and a shelf worth raiding

Order at the walk-up counter and the shop does two jobs at once. Sett Coffee pours the full range of hot and cold coffee bar drinks and takes matcha as seriously as espresso, then sends you past a curated shelf of provisions on the way out. That second half is what separates it from a straight coffee counter: the intention is that you leave with something for the house or the cooler as well as the cup in your hand. Coffee shop and market are given equal billing on the sign, and the shelf is stocked as though someone expects you to use it.

Pretzel croissants and flavoured lattes

The bake case runs to pastries, pretzel croissants and muffins, which is enough to turn a coffee stop into breakfast without pretending to be a kitchen. On the drinks side the shop plays both ends: the classics done properly, and the current run of flavoured lattes including matcha, lavender and butterfly pea.

The food is deliberately simple by design. Nothing on the counter asks for a table, which suits a place built around a queue that is heading somewhere else, and it keeps the focus where the shop wants it, on the cup and the case rather than on service.

At the top of the village, all year

Sett sits at the entrance to Amagansett village, and the room is worked in light blue and white with natural wood, a palette that lands somewhere between beach house and shopfront. It was opened by the husband and wife who run the Clam Bar out on Napeague and The Corner in Sag Harbor, which explains the confidence of the format: these are operators who already know what the East End wants at eight in the morning.

The important detail is that it trades year round rather than seasonally. That makes it a genuine local counter rather than a summer fixture, and it is the reason to point people here in February as readily as in July. Take a coffee, add a pretzel croissant, and pick up provisions on the way to the beach. In a stretch of coast that empties out after Labor Day, a counter that keeps its lights on is worth more than a seasonal one that does everything.