Montauk Restaurant Remake in the Offing for Summer 2024

Some big names in the local restaurant business are passing each other on the streets of Montauk these days as they scramble to get new ventures at very famous old places up and running for summer 2024.

The first big news is that the former Cyril’s on Montauk Highway in Napeague, at the entrance to Montauk proper, will have a new tenant this summer, to be called Shark Bar, operated by the management team from Maverick’s, the modern steakhouse that opened last summer in former East by Northeast.

A spokesperson for owner Vanessa Price and chef and East Hampton native Jeremy Blutstein described the coming Shark Bar concept as a “contemporary seafood shack” with an “expansive outdoor bar” offering seasonal locally sourced food and “imaginative fresh and frozen cocktails.”

Since Cyril’s Fish House and its famous frozen BBCs departed in 2016, following years of fighting with East Hampton Town over the massive crowds that jammed onto the property — often spilling out nearly onto Montauk Highway itself — it has been the exceptionally quiet Morty’s Oyster Stand, owned by Jeremy Morton, who also owns Ruschmeyers and the former Rick’s Crabby Cowboy Cafe.

Morty’s nearest business neighbor, Dive Bar Pizza, which had opened as Best Pizza in 2019, was unceremoniously shut down last fall by chronic problems with an overflowing septic system. But the owners confirmed this week that they have found a new home, farther east, on Montauk Harbor.

Dive Bar Pizza is preparing to move into the former Dave’s Grill building on the West Lake Drive waterfront, adjacent to the Viking Dock and Salivar’s. The building is still festooned with the pink and turquoise of its most recent tenant, T/Ts — supposedly short for Tacos/Tequila — which often landed in hot water with town code officers for overcrowding in the summer.

Dive Bar co-owner Ben Selby said that they are hoping to be open for business by July 4 week. “We’re very excited, we think being in the harbor is going to be great,” Selby said.

And another locally famous pizza name will also be arriving in Montauk this summer — Fierro’s.

Al and John Fierro, the longtime owners of the East Hampton Village pizzeria Fierro’s Pizza, have returned to the business to partner with their longtime former employees, Joe Page and Randy Kendall, who bought the East Hampton spot from them in 2022, to open a new Fierro’s to the east.

The four familiar faces are currently renovating the space that was most recently Blade & Salt, and before that Primavera, just off the circle adjacent to Lion’s Field ballfields and the Montauk Brewing Company.

Page said that he and Kendall weren’t really looking for new spot, but when Blade & Salt shuttered and someone proposed the idea to them, “It just happened.”

The changes needed at the turn-key space are few, and Page said they expect to be slinging slices and pies as soon as next week.