Zero Bond is out. Palm Beach is in.

The guests at an opening dinner for Swifty’s—owned by popular Florida hoteliers—sensed a creeping culture shift this season.

- Brock Colyar

Aerin Lauder (center) speaks to Alina Cho (left) and her mother, Kim Cho.

IT’S THE FRIDAY night of Memorial Day weekend, and a set of well-bred, well-kept society types has descended on the Hedges Inn. The historic hotel in East Hampton has just reopened under new ownership with a restaurant called Swifty’s, after the former Upper East Side socialites’ haunt. In one corner of the room, Ina Garten sips a martini and giggles with her husband, Jeffrey, and the director Rob Marshall. At the bar, the makeup artist Bobbi Brown chats with New York Fashion Week's Fern Mallis. Everyone here has an important last name or an important relative (Naomi Watts’s brother, for instance) or a vaguely important job. “She has started some big companies, but I don’t know what they are,” says one Hamptons housewife, sipping a flute of Champagne and gesturing toward a guest on the other side of the patio. Nearby, someone’s toddler doodles with a crayon in between bites of caviar. “This is such a great start to the summer,” everyone keeps saying. Through the window, hydrangeas sway in the wind.

Swifty’s is one of the buzziest openings out East this year. After much drama last season, Hamptonites seem to be issuing a deep sigh of relief: The establishment is (ostensibly) under their control once again. Last summer, the space was Sartiano's, an Italian restaurant opened by Scott Sartiano, the man behind the much-talked-about Manhattan private members’ club Zero Bond. After one season, he was forcefully rejected by the community, which moaned to the press (and the local police) that the tranquil pondside inn was becoming a celebrityand influencer-infested late-night party spot just like his club in the city. Though that never really came to pass, Sartiano couldn't save his vision; as the East Hampton mayor, Jerry Larsen, told