Seafood and Eat It

I was out west last year and after a week in the land of meat and potatoes I just felt like I needed at least one night off from prime rib for dinner. So I scanned the menu at the very homey little place we were in called North Forty—three prime rib cuts, at least half a dozen other meat cuts—and for a brief, fleeting moment I considered having the “seafood pasta.”

Of course, I came to my senses before I even got to the point of asking the waitress what, pray-tell, constituted “seafood” in a place named for cattle grazing land, but not before I said to my companions that it seemed foolish to me to order seafood 1,500 miles from the nearest body of saltwater, especially when I live, you know, by the ocean.

The East End is a funny place for a land by the sea. We have some of the finest seafood in the world available to us and yet, because we’re a whiney bunch of fussy-britches, we don’t really have that many seafood restaurants. In other vacation spots along the coast, seafood restaurants are on every block, showcasing whatever their local specialty is. On Cape Cod there are clam and chowder (or chow-dah) houses galore. In Maryland, it’s crab shacks, one right after the other. On the Outer Banks and in Florida you can barely find a roast chicken on most menus, buried beneath the cedar plank grouper, blackened wahoo tidbits and stone crab by the pound.

But around here we have precious few places that really showcase the full depth of marine delicacies we have available to us on a regular basis, especially in the fall. Our best restaurants have to spend too much of their efforts and food cost on a broad enough menu to satisfy a full four-top when one person asks, with the squinting eyes and crinkled nose of disdain, if the halibut—NOT a local fish, by the way—is “fishy.” If you’ve ever even wondered that, have the chicken.

Just a couple of weeks ago a customer visiting from Michigan remarked about the apparent lack of seafood joints and asked where to go for seafood. It sparked a bit of a conversation on the topic and the direction given, as usual, was not simple. Basically, here’s what I and another customer, a real local, came up with for an answer:

For pure seafood, all seafood and nothing but seafood you pretty much have to stay well to the eastern end of the East End. It’s a shame that this is the case, because Montauk certainly isn’t the only place out here that has seafood in its blood.

Even in Hampton Bays, which is the state’s second largest commercial seafood port, there are really only a couple of true seafood restaurants. You’ve got the Lobster Inn, which is the kind of old-school seafood restaurant—dripping with nautical atmosphere and a vast menu of every kind of salty offering you can think of—that you would expect to see a lot more of in a seaside resort town like this. And you’ve got Oakland’s, which is great for lobsters since they have all the big sizes—a sadly rare offering these days—and its neighbors at Soleau’s Wharf, Top of the Wharf and Sunset Deck that 80 percent qualify.

Docker’s is a fun spot and the food’s fine but I would hardly call it a seafood restaurant. Canal Café is fantastic but, well, same story. The clam bar attached to the old Tully’s Seafood (now an auxiliary Cor-J’s) is certainly a seafood joint, but it’s not really a dinner destination. Behind the seafood store you can find a much better approximation of a solid seafood establishment at Before the Bridge.

So you go east. Over the hills and through the woods and into the traffic we go. First stop, Southampton and what is arguably the only really refined seafood menu out here: the Plaza Café. Chef Doug Gulija’s food is high-end all the way, delicious, and focuses almost entirely on seafood, most of it locally produced. Swordfish, fluke, striped bass, sea scallops, lobster, all done up in the spiffiest preps. It’s a home run, but the bill don’t land in the cheap seats, if you get my drift.

And then you get back into the traffic, for at least half-an-hour, because there ain’t nothing else you would even remotely consider calling a seafood restaurant until you’re past East Hampton. There are places that have good seafood dishes—the awesome whole roasted black sea bass, a true local fish, at Robert’s in Water Mill (Mother Nature at her finest, with not-too-much help from Natalie Byrnes); parmesan crusted swordfish at Oasis (heavenly); lobster quesadilla at Nichols; roast cod at Rugos—but until you get to Cherrystones in the old Snowflake, don’t bother looking for a lobster bib.

Cherrystones is good. It’s a cool mix of Hamptons chic and the sort of old-school seafood place that offers oyster po-boys. The best part, if you ask me, is this: their shellfish are cheap! Just a buck apiece for clams on the half shell, in two sizes (yes, including cherrystones). God bless Kevin Boles.

After that you’ve got to hold your fishy clam breath until you get past boring old Amagansett—no fish allowed there, by declaration of the citizens committee of old folks from New Jersey—to finally get into seafood territory. It’s like the screen the Hamptons snobs have put up to block the sea air from rusting their fancy cars and mildewing their cashmere also keeps out the seaside atmosphere. Hit the Napeague stretch and you’re in another world.

The lobster roll is the defining dish of the Northeast’s seafood and the best one on the East End is at, fittingly, the Lobster Roll in Napeague. Yes, I know, the place is the most immitigable tourist trap out here and saying it’s the best is torturously cliché, but it is, I’m sorry. Everyone tries to fancy-up the lobster roll with brioche buns and lemon aioli, but none of them can compare to three simple ingredients: lobster, mayonnaise, hot dog bun. Two solutions for you crabby locals: one, it’s fall, the tourists are gone; two, call ahead, get the roll to go, and eat it when you get to the beach.

The atmosphere just up the road at Clam Bar is a vast improvement over the Rotary Club barbecue feel of the Lobster Roll structure, but the menu is sort of a bore. The fried clam strips with a cold Bud are worth stopping for though.

And then you’re in Montauk. Believe it or not, when you get to Gosman’s (’cuz that’s obviously where you will go) it will be the first place that you actually feel like ordering a lobster in the rough since you had the Shinnecock Canal and the Lobster Inn in your rearview mirror. It’s almost offensive.

Gosman’s is Gosman’s. You go for lobster. Personally, I think the main restaurant leaves a lot to be desired—the Topside is the place to go. It’s ridiculous they don’t have striped bass on the menu anywhere in Montauk, but the view is great and the food is pretty reliable. Have the lobster. Duh.

I actually should include the Sea Grille at Gurney’s Inn on this list. It’s good, classically classy and the view is unparalleled before the sun goes down. If you feel like splurging, get the 3-pound lobster Fra Diavolo. Hit it on a weeknight right after Labor Day, when it’s still light out at dinnertime.

The New England clam chowder at the Clam and Chowder House at Westlake Fishing Lodge is tops and worth stopping in for on its own. But before you order your soup, see what the sushi specials are that day, since they’re usually drawn from whatever fish was dropped on the dock the day before by one of the boats at the marina outside. Sea scallop (yes, raw), porgy (yes, raw) or squid (yes, raw) will be sure-fire favorites. Then have the chowder.

The end of our seafood quest will wrap up at Fishbar, in Gone Fishing Marina on East Lake Drive, which is fitting because this salty gem is simply the best the area has to offer in a local seafood menu. It’s like an aquarium of local fish (thanks to owner Dan Grimm’s commercial fishing father) and chef Jennifer Meadows has the kind of imagination and chutzpah to take some of the dishes locals have been making for themselves for 300 years, like smoked bluefish and clam pie, and put them on a dinner menu. It’s about flippin’ time.

Deviled blue claw crab, served in the crab’s own shell. Tilefish. Cajun monkfish sliders. Tuna burritos with ... oh, baby, wasabi cream ... that’s it: this is making me hungry. I’ll be in Montauk till spring.