THE JOURNAL
Duryea’s Lobster Deck and Fish Market. Photograph by Mr Jason Penney, courtesy of Duryea’s Lobster Deck and Fish Market
As the dog days of summer appear on the horizon, the best restaurants on Long Island are swinging into high gear.
The middle of summer is a funny time. Your hosts, who received you so graciously into their house in June, and patches of July, are now probably growing a bit weary of you popping by at weekends. The board games bought fresh at the beginning of the season, too, are not quite what they were, and hiding their best pieces. Your mosquito-bitten ankles look like the corn cobs in a clam bake, and you’re approaching Mr George Harrison levels of tan. Frankly, all you can really muster the energy for any more is another day at the beach. Good thing, then, that the restaurants on the east end of Long Island have plenty to offer — plenty beyond just the spectacular people-watching opportunities. For the best heirloom tomatoes just now beginning to shine, and the best lobster roll, for festive sundowners on a dock, and pasta like Nonna used to make, we’ve got you covered. Come east this summer – you’ll find us at the bar.
EMP Summer House
Photograph by Amex, courtesy of EMP Summer House
There is no hotter ticket in the Hamptons than the beach edition of Mr Daniel Humm and Mr Will Guidara’s Eleven Madison Park (regularly in the running for best restaurant in New York, if not the world, and usually very much landlocked in Midtown). Now in its second season in East Hampton, its entire menu (from which you can order a la carte) – and particularly the clam flatbread and airy lobster tempura – is to die for. Or at least to sit in Hamptons traffic for, which is close enough.
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Barba Bianca
Photograph by Mr Nico Malvaldi, courtesy of Barba Bianca
The best food on all of Long Island may be up on the North Fork, in the little harbor hamlet of Greenport at Barba Bianca, a 60-seat Italian restaurant from Mr Frank DeCarlo who is behind the NoLIta favourite Peasant (and named for the white beards, or barbas biancas of the fishermen bringing home the goods). Beautifully bouncy local whelks and briny sea snails, as well as North Fork skate and bluefish are the highlights of the menu.
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Sunset Beach
Photograph courtesy of Sunset Beach
A hop, skip, jump, and short ferry ride out from Sag Harbor, the Mediterranean-inflected restaurant at Mr André Balazs’s Sunset Beach hotel on Shelter Island is still one of the best places out east for food, for frolicking and for watching the sun set. You’d be hard-pressed to find a better setting for a salad niçoise or a bowl of bouchot mussels anywhere. It doesn’t lack for atmosphere either.
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Photograph courtesy of Sant Ambroeus
It is probably telling (about who lives in the area and their eating habits) that three of the best restaurants on the Upper East Side of Manhattan all have incarnations here. The French bistro Le Charlot, Milanese trattoria Sant Ambroeus (both in Southampton) and brasserie Le Bilboquet (in Sag Harbor) are the beach town’s fine-dining equivalents of Cheers, where the people are all the same — and, where the fries and lobster salad are predictably incredible and you can take a break from all of your worries.
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Moby’s
Photograph courtesy of Moby’s
It’s no accident that when MR PORTER put together our summer party out east in July, we had it at Moby’s at East Hampton Point. Not only is the deck here the best spot around for watching the sun set on the water, but the mushroom pizzas are phenomenal. Really, what else do you need? I mean, in August, what else is there, even?
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Nick & Toni’s
Photograph by Mr Eric Striffler, courtesy of Nick & Toni’s
The celebrity clientele of the 30-year-old Tuscan restaurant Nick & Toni’s always draws the most attention, both on site and even in reviews. And this is a very “see and be seen” part of the world. But, for our money, the lobster panzarella and cheesy pastas are the real reason to pop in.
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Highway Restaurant
Photograph courtesy of Highway Restaurant
If a roast chicken is the standard by which to measure everything from restaurant to chef to home cook — and we think that it is — Highway, which is run by the same team behind Eleven Madison Park and Charlie Bird, is as good as any. From fish tacos to pork buns, grilled steak and a perfect hummus, the menu here delivers on easy, drink-friendly fare.
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Jean-Georges at Topping Rose House
Photograph courtesy of Topping Rose House
Mr Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the multi-Michelin-starred chef, is among our favorite restaurateurs full-stop, and ever since he took over at the little Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton in the summer of 2016, the backyard farm-to-table spot has been a standout here (much of the produce really is grown out back). And if you overdo it on the wine list you could do worse than sleep it off in the one of the luxe guestrooms in the cottage built for Judge Abraham Topping Rose in the 1840s.
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Duryea’s Lobster Deck and Fish Market
Photograph by Mr Jason Penney, courtesy of Duryea’s Lobster Deck and Fish Market
…is precisely what it says on the tin, and if there is a better place to sit in the sun, up to your elbows in Old Bay and bits of shellfish, we’ve never heard of it. The raw bar, and boiled lobster and crab are the whole point, and anywhere where we can order a full tower of the two together, we’re on it.
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Lulu Kitchen & Bar
Photograph courtesy of Lulu Kitchen & Bar
Whereas Duryea’s is all bright al fresco delights, its sister restaurant, Lulu, is a cosy, banqueted restaurant in rich wood grains, built to showcase its wood-burning stove and wood-fired grill. If you’ve had your fill of lobsters and pizzas, Lulu does phenomenal roasted and fresh veggies.