The Crow's Nest

The Restaurant

The Crow's Nest opened in 2010 when hotelier Sean MacPherson - owner of The Bowery Hotel, The Jane, The Maritime, and a quiet empire of Los Angeles cocktail bars - bought 3.35 waterfront acres on the western edge of Lake Montauk and turned the bait-shack inn that had stood there for decades into a candlelit Mediterranean dining room with rooms upstairs. Fifteen seasons later, it is the single most recognized name in Hamptons hospitality and the room every visiting New Yorker tries to book first.

The setting is everything. A sloping lawn rolls down toward the water past wooden pergolas wrapped in fairy lights, lantern-lit dining tables sit on a deck that opens to the Lake Montauk breeze, and a wood-burning stove anchors a dining room layered with antler sconces, John-and-Yoko portraits, African textiles, and the occasional pirate flag - a high-low MacPherson aesthetic that has been imitated from Tulum to Tribeca but rarely matched. At sunset the lake turns molten and the deck fills with couples on first dates and tenth anniversaries who are too distracted to read the menu.

The food is Mediterranean with quiet seriousness - house-made hummus and labneh from the wood oven, whole grilled branzino, lamb shoulder with za'atar and yogurt, a short list of pastas that change weekly with what the Montauk fishermen bring in. The wine list leans natural French and Italian with a strong rose section that runs the whole season. The cocktail program - Old Fashioneds, Negronis, a clean martini - is exactly what the room wants. Reservations open the morning of the same date six weeks ahead. They go in minutes.