A successful South Fork restaurateur touches every table.

David Loewenberg’s life is punctuated by moments in restaurants.

He recalls his father’s mother bringing him, as a child, to a funky place on the Upper West Side, where they supped on frogs’ legs, and the warm bread came to the table impaled with a bread knife. He remembers, at 17, first hearing Pete Townshend’s solo album while cutting butter in a kitchen; a quarter century later, in the kitchen of his restaurant
Beacon in Sag Harbor, he heard the same album while chatting with a 17-year-old server cutting butter. There was the time Loewenberg was knee-deep in summertime customers at Red Bar in Southampton when the serendipity of a clogged toilet forced him to greet an Oscar-winning star with a plunger in hand. (Albeit a clean plunger.)

And there is the quintessential moment he sometimes mentions toward the end of the night—when he’s particularly ebullient and high on the buzz of the room—in which a young Loewenberg, an overworked waiter at Lola in SoHo, ended a feat of dining room acrobatics down on one knee cradling a full tray of drinks. An audience of two chain-smoking yentas declared, in perfect Brooklynese, “Oh, you-ah good.”

Yes, he is good, particularly when it comes to those graceful, selfless, spontaneous contortions that divide successful restaurateurs from hobbyists. “He has the great host instinct,” says Bonnie Munshin, who 20 years ago came to manage East Hampton institution Nick & Toni’s as Loewenberg was leaving to open his first restaurant. “We call it the restaurant gene. Restaurants stir a passion in you. And David has that in spades.”

In a merciless restaurant landscape, whose busy season some people estimate at a brisk 100 days, Loewenberg has managed to own three successful restaurants, each with its own personality and throngs of regulars. But from the whitewashed bayside interior of Beacon to the cozy high-ceilinged feel of Fresno in East Hampton to the Colonial but
contemporary formality of Red Bar, the constant is Loewenberg.

“He’s the busiest, hardest-working restaurateur I’ve ever seen,” says Eric Ripert, chef and owner of Le Bernardin in Manhattan, who first set foot in Red Bar a decade ago, and who now dines at one of Loewenberg’s restaurants weekly. “Yet he has this extremely peaceful and pleasant elegance so you don’t know he is working so hard.”

Consider the sort of balance involved in handling this recent scenario, when a supposed party of five regulars showed up at Beacon as a party of seven. While a less experienced and charismatic person might have betrayed some exasperation, Loewenberg turned a wait into a celebration, soothing some disappointed faces by disappearing into the back to procure a “very special” bottle of wine, which he tells the group—with thespian gesticulations—is among his new favorites and which he says he will try with the group as soon as he comes back with some glasses. By the time the wine has been opened and poured and drunk, two nearby tables open. The group toasted Loewenberg several times.

“He doesn’t get hot,” says Danny D’Ancona, the co-owner of the Little Wine Company, a boutique wine distributor in New York, who has eaten, drunk and done business with Loewenberg for two decades. “He can cut right to making a logical decision, or kill them with kindness if he needs to.”

Tom Schaudel, the accomplished Long Island chef (most recently of A Mano in Mattituck), who memorialized his own encyclopedic restaurant moments in Playing with Fire, says, “If you had to build a guy to work front of house, David is what you would build. He is on when he’s off. He does that shit when we’re hanging out in a flophouse in Italy. He’s busing the table, pouring drinks, folding napkins. He’s wiping my mouth.”

And now, for the first time in a while, East Enders will have a chance to sample a new Loewenberg joint. Prompted partly by economics and partly by intellectual curiosity, Loewenberg and his partner, Sam McCleland, are launching a cozy wintertime incarnation of the Beacon, their restaurant that has become synonymous with summer.

The view will still be spectacular, perhaps more so, on blustery winter nights at this 50-seat bistro looking across Sag Harbor Cove toward Shelter Island. But this venture will also allow Loewenberg to turn back the clock. To touch the tables, take orders, serve and explain the wine, slow-cook creative head-to-tail dishes, and run his room in an even more hands-on manner than he can do when he’s juggling the business side of three restaurants. “Make a reservation,” says Loewenberg, “have an open mind and an appetite. Since I was 16 I wanted to do a bistro like this. Chez Panisse, Chantarelle. They started like this.”

A New York Boy
“I always enjoyed going to restaurants,” says Loewenberg, who grew up on the Upper West Side, nourished on pizza, Cuban sandwiches, rice and beans and cold sesame noodles. He had a penchant for the theatrics, the attention to detail, the warmth of a crowded room, so his first jobs were naturally in restaurants— busing tables mostly. “I grew up with guys who were always in restaurants,” he says. “I grew up with chefs. I idolized them. There was a huge camaraderie.”

This was a particular generation of chefs and restaurateurs who were making headlines in New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s—Yves Picot (Le Bonne Soup) and Jeremy Marshall (Aqua Grill), who were classmates of classmates of Loewenberg’s at McBurney High School, or friends like Rick Moonen (RM in New York and RM Seafood in Las Vegas), Jeff Salaway (American Place in New York and Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton), Charlie Palmer (Aureole) and Donny Pintobuono (Tribeca Grill).

At an inflection point for American cuisine, these pioneers were redefining what New Yorkers considered fine dining. Those seeking more than prime rib went to Bar Louie off West Broadway, Union Square Café, or the River Café under the Brooklyn Bridge. “Nouvelle was hitting,” says Loewenberg, referring to the farm-to-table phenomenon sweeping east from California. “American chefs were really hitting. When Montrachet opened, I saved up every buck I could, and that was incredible.”

His first big gig was as the inaugural manager of Periyali, an offshoot of Aureole. “I took it very seriously,” he says. Brian Miller of the New York Times gave it three stars. And in a particularly significant restaurant moment, Periyali was also where Loewenberg met his wife, Sarah, an interior designer who has helped shape the feel of his restaurants. “In walks this very sexy British coat check-slashhostess girl,” he said. “I remember saying I could marry that girl.”

Loewenberg would go on to manage a string of high-energy Manhattan restaurants, including the first Tattoo, a two-star restaurant that morphed into a club after hours. Like many Gotham transplants, Loewenberg never thought he’d live anywhere but the Upper West Side, but he and Sarah were burnt out. And when they visited friends in Sag Harbor they quickly fell into the village’s year-round community.

Loewenberg started working for Jeff Salaway, waiting tables and eventually managing Nick & Toni’s and the now-defunct Honest Diner in Amagansett. But everyone who knew Loeweberg knew that he wanted his own place, and “everyone saw how he hustled on the floor and worked the room,” a former Nick & Toni’s waiter told me. Before long, Loewenberg courted investors. “I said, ‘I have the place, I have the concept, I’d like to open a restaurant, can I have some money?’ They said yes.” He was 28 years old, and the result was 95 School Street in Bridgehampton.

In a heyday for free-spending Wall Streeters, School Street was packed full of Hamptons celebrity types—the waiters wore brown linen aprons designed by Isaac Mizrahi—celebrating to the sounds of Paul Simon, Womack and Womack, Fine Young Cannibals, Motown, and lots of mixes on cassette. “We were young, but we had potential,” says Loewenberg, “and we knew what we wanted to do.”

The kitchen was anchored by chef Riccardo Traslavinia, who Loewenberg had met at Nick & Toni’s, as well as Sam McCleland (also via Nick & Toni’s), who would become Loewenberg’s chef and partner at Beacon, and Erik Nodeland, via nearby Karen Lee’s (now World Pie), who would become Loewenberg’s chef at Red Bar. The cooking was an early example of farm to table on the East End, based on summer crops, seafood and poultry. “We did a chicken from Iacono,” says Loewenberg of the farm on Long Lane in East Hampton. “I was brokering the deal with Sal, who said he didn’t sell to restaurants, and I said they already put my and your names in the paper. I’ll pick them up myself. We’ll go week to week.” (Loewenberg has put Iacono birds—chickens, albeit turkey-size chickens— on his Thanksgiving table for the last 12 years.)

But the up-and-comer was just getting started. After three years at School Street, he decamped from Bridgehampton and went into business with Kirk Basnight, a lawyer and School Street customer who was looking to get back into restaurants. “We enabled each other to grow,” Loewenberg says. The two went on a roll, launching Red Bar on Hampton Road in Southampton to immediate acclaim, opening Beacon in Sag Harbor the following year, and then opening Red Bar Restaurant on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. And a couple of years ago, Loewenberg
opened Fresno with longtime friend Michael Nolan.

The same trait that makes David such an accommodating host may also be what allows him to juggle successful relationships with multiple chefs, managers and partners. In a particularly transient market, he has managed to retain and nurture his staff: A husband-andwife team from Massachusetts have worked at Red Bar every summer since it opened 12 years ago. Chefs at two of his three restaurants have been with him for more than a decade, since the kitchens opened. Over four years, he mentored and promoted one young woman from a busgirl to a server and hostess; this summer, that woman is training Loewenberg’s own 15-year-old daughter. And, in a ritual he learned from Jeff Salaway, Loewenberg makes a big affair of his staff parties, which, for the last few years, involved renting the Shelter Island ferry for an October party complete with band and raw oysters, fried clams and other comestibles from the Seafood Shop in Wainscott.

But Loewenberg remains humble: “I’m the well-dressed busboy.” He is relentlessly hands-on, not afraid to swoop in to sell a complex table, bus a party that seems impatient, help a needy oenophile with a wine pairing. Loewenberg still does the wine buying for his three restaurants and each has a different list. “It would be easy to do a cookie-cutter formula, or hire a sommelier, but he’s not satisfied with that,” notes Ripert, who admires Loewenberg’s pairings, whether with the duck puffs at Beacon, or the duck breast with confit and sweet potato hash and the (“Oh my God”) baked Alaska at Red Bar.

At times, Loewenberg’s job is an athletic pursuit, so he wears “comfy clothes” and considers yoga essential cross-training. “A lot of owners walk away,” says D’Ancona. “He knows being there is so important. Everyone thinks they have spent the evening with him.”

The same may go for his staff. “He is fair. He listens. He looks you in the eye,” says one former employee. “He sweats but he works it out. Everybody walks away happy.”

“I know he gets busy and hectic, but he’s a great boss,” says Shaq, the bartender at Red Bar. “He’s attentive and responsive and folks aren’t afraid to talk to him. He’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.”

Not an Easy Busin ess It’s Friday at 5:30, a short half hour before the hordes descend upon Beacon on a spectacular evening in July, vying for a chance to sup while they watch the sun set over the Peconic Bay. A staff meal of fried chicken from Cromer’s Market is winding down. The servers have been in since 4 p.m., marking trays, checking glasses, making sure the silver’s polished. The busers arrived at 5 p.m. to stock the water, cut the bread, ready the baskets and roll-ups (the cutlery, napkin bundles that can be deposited on swiftly turning tables).

“Christian,” David says over the din to his manager, a soft way to get everyone’s attention and call the meeting to order. “That woman did call and confirmed she was coming in with a group.” Hers was a name that the staff knew. Beacon doesn’t take reservations, a policy that Loewenberg calculates a must in such a bustling location, but that often requires some adept table finagling. (“It’s like a game of Tetris,” Loewenberg says.)

Sam McCleland briefs the staff on the menu. “We’ve got an appetizer special—housemade smoked salmon spread, crème fraîche, dill. Nine orders of that. We have plenty of bresaola. That’s beef, cured, air-dried. We’ve got the local blackfish and succotash, which is open for a side. Come back and ask me.”

“Are we all good with food?” David asks the group. With broad shoulders, close-cropped hair and empathetic Romanesque features, Loewenberg is eminently comfortable in his skin. He sits in a chair, with his ankles crossed on the floor in front of him, eye to eye with his staff. He speaks in plural possessive pronouns—“us,” “our,” “we.”

“Last night was a really, really good night. We opened the doors and it was Beacon immediately. It’s only gonna get busier and busier. And some people are not taking ‘no’ for an answer.” (More often than not, people are glad to have a drink at the bar or on the patio and wait for a table to open.)

The pep talk is a balance of mundane (“There have been lots of split checks. Keep the cards separate. If we double charge a card, the credit card company will not honor that. Sammy and I have to eat that”), educational (“There’s a new Marsannay on the list. It’s a lighter style from Burgundy, priced brilliantly at $58. Really wonderful ripe cherry that you can put a chill on. It pairs with our bouillabaisse and pork Milanese”), and philosophical (“What feels like five minutes for you is not five minutes. So let’s take our time and breathe.”).

Still, Loewenberg admits occasional frustration with Beacon’s success. Turning each table three times a night, and a constant churn at the bar, necessitates a stripped-down “working menu” with many “one-pan pickups.” (One of the great ironies of Hamptons hospitality is that the popular restaurants are often too busy to do truly creative cooking.) Not to mention a high-stress front of the house environment that sometimes confronts intense rudeness.

In contrast, the slower tempo of winter will allow McCleland to alter the menu weekly or nightly, tying meals to particular wine or beer themes and to particular ingredients (truffles, local game, winter seafood). “It will keep Sammie working and keep me culturally and intellectually stimulated,” says Loewenberg. In other words, it allows him the energy of a new endeavor without the angst of looking for real estate, negotiating a lease or designing a space. “We
can be doing porchetta and off cuts of meat.” (“The man can eat more pork products than any one else I know,” says Schaudel, who has traveled through Italy twice with Loewenberg and watched him smuggle home ham both times.)

It’s a good omen that 500 friends signed up shortly after Loewenberg’s daughter set up a Beacon Sag Harbor fan page on Facebook. Just as reservation-only restaurants like Dish in Water Mill have blossomed, Loewenberg imagines these Facebook friends—as well as the thousands of customers he has touched over 20 years—to be part of what allows this more intimate restaurant to thrive this winter. “You’ve been to my house for a dinner,” he says to me. “It will be like that.”

At 6:00, the two hostesses draw straws to see who will open the gate at the base of the stairs leading up to Beacon. In the distance, a few Salvadoreans fish under Veterans Memorial Bridge, oblivious to the table-jockeying, order-juggling and evening of crisis-control about to ensue.

By 6:03, seven tables are full, they have been served bread and water, and more people are coming up the stairs. “We are in the business of accommodation. And you know how good you are by how happy people are. And by how effortless you make it seem,” says Loewenberg.

By 6:15, 70 people have been welcomed to their tables. The restaurant is nearly full. “We’re dealing with the public, so we’ve got to bob and weave. There are days when I spin around and I say, ‘Oh, my God, I love this.’”