Will that be cash, credit – or euros?
Traitorous Hamptons business owners are accepting foreign currency this summer. Throughout the pricey playground, The Post found stores, restaurants, real-estate agencies and inns dissing the downtrodden dollar as the summer season kicked into high gear on Memorial Day weekend.
The East End outpost of Madison Avenue restaurant Nello, called Nello Summertime, is in on the act.
As is the Bridgehampton Inn. Ditto the Cynthia Rowley store in East Hampton.
In fact, East Hampton’s Cook Travel agency has become the town’s ad hoc euro-exchange depot.
“We’ll take them,” Nello Summertime manager Zach Erdem said. He prefers dollars but accepts euros, most recently from a group from Spain that racked up a $1,300 tab.
“If someone comes in and doesn’t have any cash, we’ll take them,” he said.
Two shops – Style Paris in Southampton, and Loaves and Fishes Cookshop in Bridgehampton – are less discreet, with signs posted saying, “We now accept euros,” and, “Euros accepted.”
“The season hasn’t even started yet, and we already have a handful of people paying in euros,” said Sybille Van Kempen, owner of four Loaves and Fishes stores and the Bridgehampton Inn.
Kempen, 52, said she gives change in dollars.
Kempen said it’s a no-brainer, since about 35 percent of her customers in the stores and about 45 percent of her guests at the Bridgehampton Inn are foreigners.
They’re “tickled” that she takes euros and will spend more. They buy the inn’s $100-a-pound lobster salad, she said. “It’s a steal for them!”
Robin Nader, manager of the Cynthia Rowley in East Hampton, said, “We’re all expecting a lot of foreign shoppers this summer, and I wouldn’t lose a sale if someone wanted to pay in euros.”
Nader said she would be checking the fluctuating conversion rates daily this summer and will exchange them at Cook Travel agency across the street.
The agency has seen plenty of hotel and service-industry workers turning over their lucrative euro tips for a fistful of dollars, according to general manager Lorelle Fallon.
Town & Country Real Estate CEO Judi Desiderio said 19 percent of her rentals and 10 percent of home sales were from a new wave of euro-rich Europeans – five times more buyers from across the pond than ever before. Two other local real-estate firms reported a similar surge.
Meanwhile, the euro, the currency used for most of the European Community, was worth 1.57 American dollars as of Friday, up from an exchange rate of $1.35 a year ago.
Eden Portfolio, a boutique real-estate firm in Bridgehampton, exclusively markets its $10 million-to-$20 million listings to overseas clients.
The firm gives the buyer the choice to pay in euros or dollars – and allows the seller to decide whether they want the money converted to dollars.
Just a few days ago, a Parisian couple interested in a $1,000 painting at the Mark Humphrey Gallery, which sells Roy Lichtenstein and Alex Katz paintings, were shocked to hear that it accepts euros.
“They took out their wallet, pulled out a wad of euros,” owner Mark Humphrey said.
Down the street in Bridgehampton, gourmet shop Blue Provence – home of $195-per-pound Swiss-made balik smoked salmon – is also accepting euros.
But not everyone has been sold on the idea.
“This is America, you pay dollars,” sniffed Pierre Weber, 54, a French transplant whose namesake restaurant is also in Bridgehampton. “And eventually the dollar will go back up. It’s a gimmick to attract customers.”
scahalan@nypost.com