Specialty Of The House: Publick House
Some of the lunch crowd was still lingering in the Southampton Publick House dining room on Friday's frosty mid-afternoon. Open daily year round for lunch, dinner, and Sunday brunch, the expansive eatery, known for decades as Herb McCarthy's just north of Southampton Village, is the brainchild and so-far-successful enterprise of four Sullivan brothers who reopened it last June as a family-style restaurant and microbrewery.
Kevin, formerly of the Doral hotel group, runs the front of the house. Jim manages the brewery operation (the first such on the East End), producing eight different beer styles at any one time with names like Water Mill Wheat and Pumpkin Ale. And Charlie, who at 40 is a retired New York City policeman, acts as "aide du jour."
The words are Don's, at 35 the youngest of the four - and the chef. "We all bring different things to the table," Mr. Sullivan said, and "it's amazing we all get along." He cited as their common goal "the house, first."
Estimating that the restaurant served roughly 450 dinners on a "reasonable" Saturday night during the summer, Mr. Sullivan said he kept his eye on "affordability - a major component" for a "viable year-round entity."
"We all have children and have to think of the family budget," he acknowledged, reviewing an eclectic menu where the highest-priced appetizer is Maryland crab cakes with re mou lade sauce for $7, and the top entree is a $20 20-ounce Black Angus T-bone steak.
His menu "changes with the solstice and the equinox," he said, and emphasizes not only local but seasonal ingredients. Among the offerings of "winter dinner fare," for instance, is a salad of winter greens with a walnut vinaigrette, and a pasta, orecchiette, served with broccoli rabe and Italian sausage. A hearty pan-roasted loin of pork is accompanied by a wheat ale mustard sauce.
Mr. Sullivan said he asked Harry Ludlow, a Bridgehampton farmer who supplies the restaurant's potatoes, to begin growing hops for the restaurant this spring. The beers, said the chef, are "an accent" to the menu, not "a star," adding that in northern European countries such as England, Belgium, and Germany the beverage has been a traditional component of the cuisine.
Born and raised in Floral Park, Mr. Sullivan, who now lives in Hampton Bays, has been coming to the East End for 18 years.
"I have an affinity for cooking," he said. "I like it." Before opening the Publick House, he was the chef and operating partner at Rip Tide on the Shinnecock Canal near Hampton Bays for three years. Before that he worked at the Yorkville Brewery and Tavern on the Upper East Side.
He earned a bachelor's degree in economics and business from St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights in 1983, and in 1989 received a master's in hotel and restaurant management from the New School For Social Research. He "walked to work" while earning his master's, he said, earning his keep as the chef at J.P. Lofland's New York Grill on Fifth Avenue and 21st Street.
Mr. Sullivan supervises a total staff of 25, including six in the kitchen who serve up a stew of chicken, lentil, and parsnip - a "great winter dish that has been well received," he said.