If You Can Get Past the $5 Slice, Brooklyn Pizza-Making Is Alive & Well at Fini in Amagansett

The era of the $5 slice has dawned in the Hamptons. 

Make that $5.50 (but who’s counting?) for a plain cheese slice at the newly opened Fini Pizza on Amagansett’s Main Street.

The boutique, Brooklyn-based slice shop has set mouths a-chatter in the County of Kings for its $5 slices, sparking debates about topics ranging from inflation to the death of the everyman’s $1 slice, to sizzling takes on the evolution of once artist-friendly Williamsburg.

While the $5 slice is not necessarily a news flash in New York City anymore, it seems only the most natural of Cinderellas for the shoe that is the Hamptons, where inflation is not much of a talking point on the cocktail-party circuit, and where people will pay a premium for almost anything, and like it. The only question we have is, What took so long?

And we mean that sincerely. Have you examined the state of slice-shop pizzerias in the Hamptons? It is not a pretty picture. But we tell you there’s hope yet with Fini, whose owner Sean Feeney was out in the heat Thursday morning pulling weeds from the front of his new space. Feeney is also behind the curtain at Lilia and Misi, Williamsburg-based restaurants with much sought-after reservations. 

The circle of life applies here, too, as the minimalist pizzeria is operating out of the same building once filled by Astro’s, a pizzeria and restaurant that was a Main Street staple since the 1970s (a nice touch for Fini’s to keep Astro’s old wooden sign up.) Along with some already-established food and nightlife (Rosie’s, Buco Il Mare, The Stephen Talkhouse, et al), Fini seems perfectly situated to benefit from the nightlife scene steadily growing in Amagansett — the shop serves late-nite slices Friday-Sunday through a window.

On Fini’s website, under the dropdown titled “It Was All a Dream,” a brief “about us” says the retro slice joint’s theme is inspired by a “lifelong obsession of neighborhood pizzerias.” The new interior in the Amagansett outpost indeed boasts a picture of Bed Stuy’s own Biggie Smalls, as well as a couple of other generic nods to Brooklyn, but it doesn’t necessarily scream hipster throwback slice shop.

The prices don’t, either, but that’s an entirely different discussion.  

On the Brooklyn foodie scene, Fini’s pizza game has garnered mostly rave reviews. The consensus has been that once you get over the sticker-shock, the pizza is pretty darn good, and once you start doing the math on the rising cost of staple ingredients like tomatoes, flour, cheese, etc, the bloated price becomes a little more justifiable. 

But can serious pizza aficionados put a price on quality? To be determined. For the well-trained, however, the aroma of a freshly made pizza alone is almost enough to determine whether the pie-slingers have skimped on quality ingredients. At Fini, the pizza in the air is the first sign that you’re in for something artfully made and delicious.

The pizza gods will sort out the supply and demand, but a plain cheese slice at Fini Amagansett was light, clean to eat, and texturally almost perfect between the thin, airy char of the crust and the perfect ratios of not overly salted sauce to delicate splotches of milky mozzarella. Two slices will go down without much of a fight.

Easily folded by hand, a slice from Fini might remind NYC pizza aficionados of the artisanal, scissor-cut slices at Di Fara, one of the first obscure Brooklyn pizza joints to gain a cult-like following while charging more than double the average slice at the time. 

Fini, led by chef Will Unseld, also serves pies ($32 for a plain cheese), Italian ices, and salads.

Look, the $5 slice is a growing reality among high-end pizza joints, but there’s definitely a real difference between the average slice around town and a slice from Fini. If you can stomach the prices (which we suspect you can), it’s fair to say that Fini’s and the Hamptons are a match made in pizza heaven. 

Fini Pizza is located at 237 Main Street in Amagansett. Visit finipizza.com/amagansett for more info.