Duryea's Lobster Deck

The Restaurant

Duryea's has fed Montauk since 1923. The original Duryea family ran a fishing fleet and wholesale lobster pound from the small bayfront parcel on Tuthill Road for three generations, and when Marc Rowan - billionaire Apollo founder and Montauk house owner - bought the operation in 2014, he had the wisdom to leave almost everything alone. The wholesale lobster bins still sit in the old white market building. The deck is still the deck. The view from the hillside out across Fort Pond Bay toward Gardiner's Island and Block Island Sound is still the best free thing in the Hamptons.

The format is order-at-the-counter and find-a-picnic-table - concrete tables under green-and-white umbrellas, white plastic chairs, brown paper trays, and a single seasoned waitress moving between the deck and the kitchen with the unflappable rhythm of someone who has done this every summer for twenty years. The signature dish - and the one that draws Manhattan in cars at noon for a Tuesday lunch - is the Duryea's Lobster Cobb, $97 of cold-water Maine lobster meat over avocado, bacon, hard-boiled egg, blue cheese, and a hillside sunset.

The classic Duryea's lobster roll is small, hot, buttered, and quietly perfect. The clam chowder is from a recipe nobody has touched since the seventies. The wine pour is Whispering Angel by the bucket. The crowd is half local Montauk fishing-fleet diaspora and half Apollo-and-Goldman cufflinks who flew in by helicopter at noon and pretend they didn't. Bring cash, sunglasses, and a sweater - the breeze comes up fast after seven.