Italian Restaurant Planned For Olde Speonk Inn Site

A new pizza joint is coming to town.

Bill, Vinny and Chris Chambers, the owners of Mary’s Pizza and Pasta—an Italian eatery with locations in Farmingdale, Islip Terrace and Wantagh—will be flipping pies on Montauk Highway, in Speonk, in just a few months.

The three brothers plan to open their first East End location sometime this winter, when renovations on the nearly 100-year-old building, best known as the Olde Speonk Inn and Martini Grill, are expected to wrap up.

Construction on the property, which was bought by the trio in April 2016, began about two weeks ago, following a few permit holdups with the Suffolk County Health Services Department last year.

The plans for the site include knocking down part of the building that was “pretty much falling down,” adding a basement and new foundation and re-building it to its original size, Bill Chambers said. The entire interior has been cleared out and the new building will feature new hardware, fixtures and equipment.

To highlight some of the property’s history, the building will also be returned to its original color—hunter green.

“People in this building always had the Band-Aid approach,” Bill Chambers said, standing in front of the construction site with his brothers on Friday morning. “Every owner and operator in here was just putting layers of floor on top of layers of floor and trying to fix beams with duct tape.”

“We had to gut everything,” Chris Chambers, a Speonk resident, added.

When it’s all said and done, the restaurant, which has been sitting vacant for the past few years, will be about 5,000 square feet. And upstairs, there will be a smaller space, which will be used for an office.

The new pizzeria will have seating for 80 and feature an outdoor patio in the front of the building. Customers can expect a modern sit-down restaurant with large pizza displays and dine-in, take-out and catering menus complete with classic Italian plates and chicken, seafood and vegetable dishes—like chicken rollatini, flounder Francaise and eggplant caprese paninis.

Unlike the three other locations that serve only beer and wine, unique to this restaurant will be a full bar, serving up mixed drinks and specialty cocktails.

The Chambers brothers’ main goal is to bring something new to the community, said Vinny Chambers, a Nesconset resident.

“We want to be someplace that everybody can come to,” he said, noting that the restaurant will also feature a room that customers can rent for parties and special occasions.

“I’m just looking forward to making pizza, and working with my two best friends,” said Bill Chambers, an East Quogue resident.