The authentic and timeless world of Ralph Lauren
April 2025
RL/Home

Picnic Par Excellence

How to do a Hamptons-inspired beach barbecue, Ralph style
By Shannon Adducci
Packing a meal and toting it to a sandy shore on a scorching summer day is something of a universal experience. Who hasn’t unwrapped sandwiches in plastic, cracked open a perspiring beverage, and shared a bag of potato chips with sandy fingers under a shady umbrella?  In 2012, Ricky published The Hamptons: Food, Family, and History, a cookbook and memoir that compiles her favorite beach-adjacent recipes and love of its history as a place with photographs that capture that simple yet cinematic Lauren way of living. In her and Ralph’s eyes, a family picnic might include a rugged Jeep parked on a dune, sand hiding in seat crevasses, the back hatch overflowing with striped blankets and towels, pillows, umbrellas, frisbees, hats—and handwoven straw baskets filled with provisions for grilled burgers and corn, plus Nana’s brownies (Ricky’s mother’s own recipe) and a few bottles of Pouilly-Fumé. Or it could be an evening lobster-and-clambake on Ditch Plains Beach, a table set with crisp linens and blue-and-white dinnerware. Nearby, a beach bonfire crackles while good music, close friends, and a languorous summer sunset complete the mise en scène.
The book also reveals memories of the family’s East End summer vacation style through the decades. In the early ’70s, they first rented a rustic barn in Southampton as newlyweds. Then, it was on to the barefoot-and-carefree lifestyle of Amagansett and later the dunes of East Hampton, where the couple and their three children spent many summers roaming the Rosa rugosa–bordered lawn, playing impromptu games of softball; and, finally, the cherished seclusion and windswept views atop the cliffs in Montauk. Within each of these chapters, interwoven with plenty of simple yet delicious recipes, Ricky recalls intimate family moments—teaching her older son Andrew to walk; feeding treats to the family dog, Rugby; and hosting movie nights on a 16-millimeter film projector. It is an intimate picture of the Hamptons then, now, and always.
SHANNON ADDUCCI is a writer and fashion editor based in New York. Her work has appeared in Elle, GQ, Departures, Robb Report, WWD and T: The New York Times Style Magazine.
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