The Patio at 54 Main

The Patio at 54 Main, a mainstay of Westhampton Beach’s Main Street, underwent a transformation in early 2007, when owner Dwayne Kirchner brought in new staff and tweaked everything from the menu to the name to the look and feel of the restaurant.

Now, as the restaurant celebrates its 80th anniversary in 2010, the deck has been shuffled yet again. Meredith Panaghi was promoted to general manager nine months ago, after serving as shift manager for two years, and executive chef Jesse O’Neill took the helm in the kitchen at the start of the new year. The new team has already made its mark on the menu, adding some dishes and retooling some of the recipes.

Sometime in early May, before the start of the summer season, Mr. O’Neill said he plans to revamp the offerings even more, balancing out the traditional steakhouse menu with a wider variety of seafood dishes and other entrées.

“I just want it to be approachable,” Mr. O’Neill said. “I want it to change everybody’s conception that it is just a steakhouse.”

As it stands, the steaks are currently the most popular entrées at the year-round restaurant, according to the staff. Offerings include a hanger steak with horseradish cream and truffle fries for $25. A 6-ounce petite filet mignon is $27, and a 12-ounce filet mignon is $37. Both of those entrées come with hand-whipped potatoes.

Staff members said that the single most popular dish is a long-standing special: the 40-ounce porterhouse, an $85 monster that diners typically share.

“It’s a staple at this point on our menu,” Mr. O’Neill said.

The restaurant also offers a number of other entrées, some of which Mr. O’Neill said he has added to the menu or tweaked in recent months. The roast chicken comes with spaetzle, roasted mushrooms and truffle jus, and costs $22. The salmon, with zucchini, almonds and pecorino, costs $25. A pork chop, with braised cabbage and spinach, costs $22. The New Zealand lamb chop comes with radicchio and feta cheese and costs $28. And the mussels frites, which costs $19, comes in two possible combinations: one is seasoned with garlic and white wine and the other with fennel and thyme.

Three pasta dishes round out the restaurant’s current selection of entrées. The orecchiette comes with chorizo, winter greens and goat cheese and costs $23. The spaghetti salad, which costs $22, comes with grilled shrimp, plum tomatoes and arugula. And the Israeli couscous, which costs $19, comes with butternut squash and is topped with walnut pesto and pecorino.

For a lighter meal, The Patio at 54 Main also offers a few sandwiches and burgers, which range from the $13 Patio 54 burger to the $21 lobster roll. All sandwiches come with a side of fries.

Mr. O’Neill said he has made a project of expanding the restaurant’s raw bar in recent months. He now offers two kinds of oysters—west coast and east coast—and said he enjoys coming out of the kitchen to explain the nuances that distinguish the two types when customers have questions.

“It’s one of my favorite things to work with,” Mr. O’Neill said. “I have a tremendous love for oysters and shellfish and anything having to do with it.”

Oysters are $2 apiece, and clams are $1.50. The raw bar also offers a shrimp cocktail and a crabmeat cocktail, each for $15.

Come May, Mr. O’Neill and Ms. Panaghi said they will introduce a new menu which retains many of the current dishes, but moves the restaurant toward its goal of becoming a regular go-to establishment, rather than a place reserved for a steak dinner on a special occasion.

“If people want to have dinner here three days a week, they can get a different meal each time,” Ms. Panaghi said.

Mr. O’Neill, who worked at the Surf Lodge in Montauk before making his way to The Patio at 54 Main, said he is in the process of taste-testing the new dishes, but he offered some previews—with many offerings following a seafood theme. He said he plans to introduce, among other dishes, a crab ceviche with mango marinade and fresh blueberries; a summer fluke crudo with yuzu, sriracha sauce and poppy see; a local striped bass with cornbread panzanella salad, crumbled chorizo and lemon vinaigrette; and, finally, a pepper tuna nicoise with baby zucchini, red bell pepper and salsa verde.

The new entrées will mostly fall in the ballpark of $20, Mr. O’Neill said, with some as low as $15 and none more than $25. The idea is to make the restaurant more accessible.

“That’s our mind-set going in, lowering the price point,” he said.

Some current offerings are destined to be casualties of the shift, Mr. O’Neill said. The pork chop may go, and the mussels frites may be relegated to the starter menu. And instead of offering a 12-ounce filet mignon and a 6-ounce filet mignon, the restaurant may choose to settle on a single size, somewhere in the neighborhood of eight ounces, Mr. O’Neill said.

Jennifer Elten, the bar manager, said she is working on a new cocktail list to mesh with Mr. O’Neill’s new menu. Ms. Elten said that one of the best features of The Patio at 54 Main is the dynamic between the bar at the front of the restaurant, where bands play on Friday and Saturday nights in the off-season, and on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights over the summer, and the dining area in the back.

“It’s upscale inside, but in here it’s a little more casual,” she said. “It’s the best of both worlds.”

Happy hour runs seven days per week, year-round, from 3 to 6:30 p.m., during which all drinks are half-price at the bar.

After the restaurant’s Easter Sunday brunch was a hit this week, Mr. O’Neill said that The Patio at 54 Main may run a brunch from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. every Sunday from here on in. Two courses off the brunch menu—which featured a mix of breakfast and lunch items—cost $25, and come with a complimentary drink, according to Mr. O’Neill. To mix a dinner item in toward the end of the day, would cost $5 more, he said.

“People have been looking for a really good brunch place in town,” Mr. O’Neill said. “So it seems we can offer that as well.”