Brent Newsom

Brent Newsom Caterers

Restaurateur & Philanthropist

Born in Fresno, California in 1937, and raised in the tree-lined streets of Sacramento, “Andy Hardy-Ville,” Brent Newsom became co-owner of the Swamp in Wainscott with Bill Higgins in 1977, chef of the gay complex’s restaurant The Annex until 1995. Newsom’s catering business, which he began in the 90s from the Annex kitchen, was based in various venues in Bridgehampton and Springs until he retired in 2016. Aside from being one of the earliest and most successful catering businesses in the Hamptons, with many exciting celebrity gigs for such clients as Bruce Weber, Ralph Lauren, Ina Garten, and Martha Stewart, Brent Newsom Caterers donated food and services to streams of charitable events throughout its entire run for organizations such as the Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the East End Gay Organization. A workaholic by anyone’s measure, Newsom created essential employment opportunities and maintained cherished homes-away-from-home for countless LGBTQ+ people on the East End for decades. At times the homes were literal; in the darkest years of the AIDS epidemic, Newsom welcomed people dying of AIDS.  He received them into his Wainscott and East Hampton residences, providing them with the shelter and care they denied by the families and local systems that had abandoned them or denied them services. These compassionate actions fulfilled needs with a pure and humane heart, without expectations, reimbursements, or favors. A gentle, kind, generous, food-and-theater-loving, and humorous man, Newsom has been a beloved friend and father figure to many LGBTQ+ people on the East End for over forty years.