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Montauk is a pretty quiet place in the winter. After the “second summer” of the autumn fishing season winds down around Thanksgiving, the crowds vanish and a lot of the hamlet’s restaurants shut their doors, at least until the lilacs bloom.
But at Gurney’s Inn the winter is just another season for another crowd and the resort’s sprawling oceanfront restaurant is trucking along as usual: breakfast, lunch and dinner, seven days a week. The dining service motto is “Open 365¼ Delicious Days of the Year.”
Despite the obvious dropoff in the number of diners, the enormous menu of classically prepared Italian and French dishes at the Sea Grill, complemented by health- and diet-friendly “Spa” appetizers and entrées, is still at full strength throughout the off season, as are nightly specials. The dinner offerings are moderately priced—appetizers generally run from $10 to $14 and entrées from $22 to $34—and the portions are large.
In addition, the Sea Grill offers a nightly early bird three-course prix fixe menu—one of the largest to be found anywhere, with eight appetizer choices and eight entrée choices—for $26, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m.
Gurney’s Inn food manager and Sea Grill chef Angelo “Chip” Monte concedes that being open all winter can be a struggle at times, but also has its benefits. Many restaurants that close in the off-season, or pare back their hours of operation significantly, suffer from staffing inconsistencies and service suffers as a result.
Asked how long she had worked on the floor at Sea Grill, one waitress, Alice, commented, “Only five years,” suggesting that she is one of the newer members of the waitstaff.
On a recent weekend evening the dining room of the Sea Grill was bustling with guests at the hotel, young fiancés and fiancées who had made the trip east for a wedding fair and stayed to sample the food, some local Montauk families and a couple celebrating their 27th wedding anniversary.
The main dining room of the Sea Grill is an impressive space of the sort only possible at a complex as large as Gurney’s. The sprawling space was clearly built with summertime in mind—seating for easily 200 or more diners and a sunken bar area as long as a tractor trailer. The extra space means that when crowds are lighter in winter, nearly everyone gets a window seat.
The windows—more than just windows, really walls of glass—run down three sides of the dining room. The Atlantic ocean sits almost directly beneath them. The Sea Grill is one of only a few East End restaurants that can boast such a resplendent view. And, starting next weekend, the sun won’t be setting until well after the first dinner reservations are seated. When the dining room isn’t as jam-packed as in summer, an alabaster white grand piano adorns the middle of the room, replacing piped in dinner music on weekends.
As at any good resort, be it shrouded in snow or bathed in sunshine, guests and visitors at Gurney’s Inn can get a meal at just about any time of the day, from the crack of dawn until well after the kids’ bedtimes.
There are two dining rooms at Gurneys—both have views of the ocean. Breakfast and lunch are served in the Café Monte. Like the dinner menu, the lunch menu is long and tailored for the widest possible range of tastes. Lunch items run from appetizer-style dishes like raw local clams, mussels in white wine and garlic, and homemade fresh mozzarella to handmade pizzas and a long list of sandwiches and wraps.
The list includes a French dip, vegetarian burger, chicken or veal cutlet parmigiana heros, turkey and tuna club sandwiches, cold lobster salad, steak tidbits, grilled southwestern chicken with peppers and cheddar cheese and barbecue sauce, a grilled chicken panini with grilled onions and mesclun on focaccia, grilled portobello with fresh mozzarella and fire roasted sweet red peppers and the “Monte Godfather”—a towering pile of soppressata, aged Aureccchio provolone, Genoa salami and pepperoni, topped with diced olives, hot peppers and Italian dressing on home-baked Italian hero.
None of the appetizers or sandwiches is priced above $10. For heartier appetites there are entrée-size lunches of imported linguini, penne primavera, “Gurney’s Famous” fish and chips, cioppino and live lobsters.
At dinner, which starts at 5:30 every night, appetizers include snow crab claws, tuna carpaccio, baked clams “Alla Monte”—whole cherrystone-size clams topped with seasoned bread crumbs, rather than chopped up and mixed into the bread crumbs—coconut shrimp rolls, mussels and shrimp cocktail. There’s homemade clam chowder and a daily soup special to go with three salads: Caesar, tri-color (radicchio, endive and arugula) and Gurney’s Special of frisée, watercress, beets and gorgonzola in raspberry vinaigrette, topped with almonds.
Appetizers and salads range from $7 (both soups) to $14 (crab claws, shrimp cocktail, tuna).
Signature dishes include penne alla Candice: chicken, fresh asparagus and sun dried tomatoes sautéed in white wine and garlic and tossed over imported pasta; “seafood delight”: shrimp, sea scallops and lobster over penne in tomato cream sauce; and “penna Romano”: filet mignon tips sautéed with sun dried tomatoes, sliced mushrooms and fresh asparagus in sherry wine.
Among the classic pastas are: linguini in white clam sauce, penne alla vodka and penne primavera. There are fowl choices: chicken Francese, parmigiana or marsala and roast duck l’orange; and meats: a New York strip, with an au poivre option, and filet mignon with baked Idaho potatoes. But the marquis is the “pesce,” or seafood, section of the menu, as it should be at a restaurant that probably gets spindrift on its windows when the wind blows out of the south.
Local flounder fillets are stuffed with vegetables and topped with dill beurre blanc; Atlantic salmon (farmed) is grilled and served over julienned vegetables with lemon caper sauce; shrimp fra diavolo, shrimp and clams sautéed in fresh basil and white wine and served in a spicy tomato sauce over linguini; and broiled sea scallops with lemon butter and white wine and sautéed vegetables.
Other seafood choices include baked shrimp “Alla Monte,” breaded and baked according to an old Monte family recipe; cioppino, shrimp, mussels, clams, calamari, and fresh fish sautéed in a tomato sauce and served over linguini; and live lobsters, two or three pounds and available steamed, broiled or fra diavolo. Lobsters are market price. Pastas are between $20 and $29. Steaks are $32 or $34 and seafood entrées are $26 to $29, except for the lobsters.
The spa menu never skimps on the ingredients, opting instead to pare back the portions a bit and steer clear of the frying pan and oils. Still, there is a crab cake, whole wheat potstickers (healthy portions at four to an order over mesclun greens), and a pair of salads with low carb dressings to start and vegetable and tofu stir fry, grilled salmon, boneless chicken breast and seafood boullaibaisse for entrées. Spa dishes are $8 or $9 for appetizers and $19 to $23 for entrées.
Last weekend’s special entrées were fresh-caught codfish, baked and served atop a bed of thick and creamy whipped cauliflower, $27, and double-cut rack of lamb, $40.
290 Montauk Highway, Montauk
668-2345
All major credit cards
Fully handicapped accessible
Reservations are recommended
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