East End Eats: Dining At Gurney's Inn

Gurney's Inn, high on the Montauk dunes, has one peerless advantage that keeps visitors coming back year after year and must make competitors gnash their teeth in frustration - it is the only restaurant within miles that is perched right on the ocean.

Photo: Morgan McGivern

If you are escaping from stress and fumes and noise, what could beat a spring lunch or a summer dinner watching the breaking surf and swooping sea birds? We found ourselves there in the dead of winter, though, so the experience was somewhat muted.

The way the inn is arranged and decorated adds to the nautical feel of the place. The huge dining room is backed by a slightly raised bar area; beyond that, higher still, is a brightly lit cafe. Our dining companion Lambert insisted that it looked just like the interior of a grand old ocean- liner, long passed from all memory except his.

Seafood Emphasis

As is fitting with a Montauk restaurant, the emphasis is on seafood, with choices of raw clams and oysters, baked clams, mussels, crab cakes, and two shrimp dishes. Appetizers start at $4.75 for chowder or soup of the day. On this occasion it was a very pleasant cream of vegetable puree with added rough chopped vegetables.

The mussels, sauteed with leeks and garlic in a Pernod cream sauce, were truly delicious. It was a generous portion, all the mussels were plump and moist, and the sauce was both unusual and perfectly matched to the mussels.

The crisp, well-flavored Caesar salad, liberally sprinkled with garlic croutons and excellent Parmesan, is enough to feed a small happy army.

The most expensive appetizer was Thai crab cakes with sesame slaw and coral sauce at $15. The portion, however, was as big as some restaurants serve as an entree, so it represents good value for money. In fact, a serving of mussels followed by the crab cakes would have made a nicely balanced light meal.

The entrees also favor seafood. There's salmon and lobster, lobster tails and scampi, tuna and swordfish, linguine with clams in white or red sauce, fettucine with shrimp, and a daily fish choice that will be cooked to your specification.

We had a bit of a wait for the main course, after which it was surprising that the duck was so overcooked that it had to be sent back. The staff was very gracious about it, didn't charge, and offered its recipient a free dessert to compensate.

Needn't Have Worried

We were a little nervous when we learned the rack of lamb was in a peanut crust and served with Hunan sauce, but we needn't have been. It was good indeed, as were the whipped garlic potatoes it came with.

In fact, all the side dishes were excellent. There was a delicious combination of green beans and onions and a couscous that was good enough to have been a meal by itself.

The seafood risotto, while a little overcooked, came with all sorts of tasty morsels - shrimp, scallops, Little Necks, mussels, and more. But Gurney's chicken, which it boasts is the most tender and moist ever served, had done longer than its allotted stint in the oven and wasn't.

Left In The Oven

We suspect that the chef was preoccupied with the big private party going on at the same time and the birds got left in the oven a bit too long. It can happen. That may have been what went wrong with the duck.

There is one minor criticism that wasn't the result of timing, though. By the time we had finished our appetizers it was only about 8:15 but we were alone in the dining room, the other couple of diners having left. The other tables glinted with crystal and silverware and one felt that at any moment some cheery group might arrive.

Those hopes were dashed when the waitstaff swept through the room and cleared all the tables. They did it quietly and discreetly, but the message was the same - the fun's over we're getting ready to close.

Frosty Tundra

The empty room and frosty tundra of naked white tabletops didn't do anything for the mood, especially since, on the other side of the deck, we could see a terrific party going on in the inn's private rooms.

The dessert plates came liberally decorated with brilliant green, red, and yellow patterns, as if for a child's party.

As the Grand Mariner Napoleon (was that a nautical pun?) proved stubbornly unyielding to a fork and had to be manhandled around the plate a bit, it resulted in a rather amusing neon green Abstract Expressionist mess.

Terrific Coffee

As to the four desserts themselves, I think I'll just pass over them and get on to the terrific coffee, which comes any which way you like it, including double-decaf espresso.

All in all, we caught Gurney's on an off February night. Since everything was within a hair of being just right, we plan to return when the weather is warm and the chef has a sous chef around to watch the ovens. By then the place will be bustling with people and, with longer daylight hours, we will be able to watch the surf breaking on the beach as the moon rises over the ocean.