Review: Lundy Bros Keeps the Spirit of the 1920’s Seafood Restaurant Original Now in Red Hook

Lundy Bros., which opened in December in Red Hook, is fueled by nostalgia for Old Brooklyn. The restaurant is a reboot of a historic Sheepshead Bay seafood hall, F.W.I. Lundy Brothers, which in the 1920s served up to 15,000 people a day. Lundy’s closed in 1977, after the death of its founder, was reopened by a new team in the mid-1990s, and then shuttered again in 2007.

The most recent owner, Frank Cretella, gave the name to Sandra Snyder — who once went to Lundy’s on an early date with her now husband, Red Hook Winery owner Mark Snyder. The reboot offers some key differences: It’s much smaller, with about 100 seats, as opposed to 2,800 in the original. And it’s on a different waterfront, looking out at New York Harbor, not Jamaica Bay. Yet the dining room and the menu serve as a portal to an earlier time in the way that the best of this city’s classic restaurants do.

Gavin Doran/Lundy Bros.

The vibe: I arrive at Lundy’s (44 Beard Street, at Dwight Street) on a Friday around 7 p.m. on the kind of rainy winter night that’s a reminder of how much Red Hook can feel like it’s the end of the earth. The expansive bar in what used to be live music bar Rocky Sullivan’s was mostly empty. It was a bit chilly in there, so my companion and I kept our coats as the hostess led us to the dining room. We walked past a stage for live music, as well as an old built-in phone booth that predates Lundy’s but fits with the throwback aesthetic.

It turns out we could have checked the coats: As we entered the dining room, we were greeted by the warmth and pleasant smell of logs burning in the fireplace. The ceiling lights wore fringe chandelier covers, the walls were exposed brick, and Sam Cooke played on the stereo. About half the white-tableclothed settings were full, mostly with older couples and millennials out with their parents. (This is the kind of place you take your father-in-law out for surf and turf.) Even the view out the window of a defunct Red Hook port crane in Erie Basin Park points to a bygone era. Ikea, thankfully, is just out of frame. (There’s a patio that will open in the spring.)

Gavin Doran/Lundy’s

The food: The menu keeps with the throwback theme, plucking several items from the original menu. As a general rule, any dish that has “Famous” or “Lundy’s” in the name is worth ordering, from flaky, shuffleboard-puck-size biscuits with whipped butter to a classic clam bisque ($10) with smoked bacon, potato, and cream. The Famous Chicken Dinner ($26) (made from the old Lundy’s recipe) features a bird that’s roasted until its herbaceous skin is lightly crisped, and served in three pieces (breast and wing, thigh, and drumstick) alongside a boat of rich gravy. Get it with a side of potatoes ($10) slathered with sour cream, and caramelized onion that was sweet enough to remind me of apple sauce, and thus latkes.

The baked seafood appetizers are solid, if not spectacular, from very large oysters Rockefeller to baked clams in white wine and garlic. The seafood tower is more of a seafood mid-rise, but at $65, it’s less expensive than they often are at fine-dining restaurants; it comes with a half lobster tail, two each of raw oysters, clams, and very large cooked shrimp, and a healthy helping of crab Louie. Several options exist for more land-bound carnivores, including a porterhouse for two ($147) modeled on the iconic Peter Luger steak and a pork chop Milanese ($38).

The signature dessert, another item from the original Lundy’s, is the huckleberry pie ($23), which is listed for two (but could easily be split three or four ways) and is topped with a giant scoop of vanilla ice cream.

The service was quick and friendly throughout, even as the room filled up. The dishes came in rapid succession, perhaps a tad too fast — my dining companion said she felt a little rushed, although I chalked the pace more to the server’s attentiveness than to a desire to turn our table. By the time we were done with the pie, I didn’t need any encouragement to get the check; I’d overeaten and was ready to be carried out, like a body from the St. James Infirmary — which Louis Armstrong was singing over the speakers as we rose to go.

Gavin Doran/Lundy’s

Tips: The full menu is available in the bar, and with music performances picking up this month, that’s likely to turn into a lively alternative to the dining room. (The bar has a two-drink minimum for shows, and you should say in your reservation notes if you prefer to sit there on music nights.) No matter which space you choose, the Shore Dinner, a three-course prix fixe that was a fixture at the original restaurant, is a pretty decent deal: It starts with clam bisque and a side salad, moves on to chicken ($40), catch of the day ($45), or broiled lobster ($55), and ends with a housemade butterscotch sundae. Judging by the number of sundaes I saw come out of the kitchen, this seems like a pretty popular way to go here.

Justin Goldman is a Brooklyn-based freelance journalist who covers travel, culture, food, and wine. A former longtime editor at Hemispheres, he has also contributed to Condé Nast Traveler, Wine Enthusiast, and the Los Angeles Times.