'Cocktails at Lunch' Serves as LGBTQ-Friendly Haven

When Lobster Roll opened its Southampton location last winter, the restaurant set itself apart from its eponymous predecessor — an iconic seasonal shack, also known as LUNCH, on the Napeague stretch — by focusing on the dinner and cocktail menu for the year-round crowd.

But six months into the Southampton restaurant’s debut, the late-night scene was still thin. And, one evening, Steven Stolman noticed — and he had an idea.

After all, he had done this once before.

It was the mid-1990s, and the designer, who had recently opened a resort wear shop in Palm Beach, was at the bar of The Colony Hotel — which was “wonderful,” he said, but always empty — when the manager sat down next to him and introduced herself.

“She said, ‘Honey, what are we gonna do about this bar? It’s dying,’” he recalled. “I said, ‘Well, would you ever consider doing gay night?’”

To the first Thursday night happy hour, Stolman brought six friends. The second time, the crowd doubled. By the third gathering, 30 people came — and today, during non-pandemic times, there can be as many as 100 revelers in attendance, he said.

“It has become one of the biggest nights at The Colony’s hotel bar,” he said. “It’s become a classic. It’s one of those great traditions — and it’s still going on.”

So, when LUNCH co-owner Andrea Anthony expressed that she wanted a more robust happy hour, Stolman suggested they apply the same strategy.

“And it worked,” he said.

Every Thursday evening starting at 6 p.m., Anthony lowers the lights, turns up the music and serves complimentary hors d’oeuvres for the LGBTQ-friendly happy hour, which kicked off on June 30, the last day of Pride Month.

“It was at the time that Roe v. Wade was overturned,” Stolman recalled. “The gay community is very aware that we’re next, and that they will go after marriage equality. They will go after same sex adoption. I said, this is serious, and things that we thought were settled law are now endangered.”

While the significance of the happy hour is certainly not lost on Stolman and other guests, the mood of the event is light and fun with a mixed crowd of LGBTQ and allies. Anthony hosts them at the main bar, she said, where she serves popcorn shrimp, clam strips, calamari and sometimes some specialty flatbreads, free of charge. Cocktail specials will be offered down the road, she said.

“It started with a sense of responsibility and wanting to support that community,” Anthony said. “At the same time, other guests come in and we all have a great time. It’s a way for everybody to socialize in a place that’s comfortable. At the end of the day, we’re all people and it’s nice to meet the needs of that community, but also, anyone is welcome to come.”

While the East End has, traditionally, been a refuge for the gay community for decades, Stolman said that there is a need for welcoming LGBTQ spaces — and he expects “Cocktails at LUNCH” to join the ranks of festive Friday nights at Almond in Bridgehampton and Thursday gatherings at The Clubhouse in East Hampton.

It even has the potential to become an institution like The Colony, he said.

“How in the world could there be a pop-up gay bar in what is, for all intents and purposes, a roadside, family restaurant? And that’s the irony of it,” he said. “Because in these times, when so many human rights are at risk, for a restaurant like the Lobster Roll to be this welcoming and this hospitable and gracious speaks volumes, where in other states — in Florida, in Texas — the gay community is genuinely endangered. How marvelous that we are seeing the opposite happen in Southampton.”