Restaurant Reviews
Star Deck Grill At Star Island Marina, Montauk
The following article originally appeared in the Montauk Pioneer.
Guide your car into the yacht club’s marina parking lot and you’re likely to find charter boats pulling into their slips as crowds gather to watch the day’s fish haul being cleaned on the docks. Star Island Yacht Club in Montauk, besides being a favorite tie up site for sports fisherman who go after everything in the water from striped bass to thresher sharks, also boasts a casual eatery right on the banks of the harbor. In fact, many of these fish end up on the menu at the Star Deck Grill, the Club’s own restaurant.
Fresh local tuna, a popular favorite with diners, is served grilled on a seeded bun and – if you wish – accompanied by an ice-cold draft beer. Alfresco dining is the rule at the Star Deck, there are no indoor tables.
You can sit at a booth under the awning or pick a table poolside where boaters come to cool off after a day or a week at sea. After being introduced to the Deck’s new chef, Karim Fard, we started off with a wonderful New England-style clam chowder, followed by the Grill’s famous tequila popper appetizer: a cheese and hot pepper finger-sized combination that’s deep fried and spicy.
Snacks such as spicy wings, shrimp poppers, shrimp cocktail and mozzarella sticks can be enjoyed with frozen drinks like strawberry margaritas, pina coladas or daiquiri-style drinks. The Star Deck Grill offers a full bar. In his heavily-accented French, Fard recommended the Fourth of July special that was being promoted last weekend – a generous amount of barbecue ribs and chicken served with an ear of corn.
The ribs were some of the best around, so tender that they fell right off the bone. Of course, both of these entrees are offered all summer. The Grill’s broasted chicken is carefully prepared in the kitchen, seared in a special pressure cooker that the chef says, "makes it crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside." Other entrees that are from the sea include fried shrimp, flounder and calamari.
For just a sandwich, a visitor to the restaurant can order turkey, ham and Swiss cheese, corned beef and rye or chicken salad, all freshly prepared. In the mood for a marinated, grilled, 10-ounce rib-eye steak?
They have it here, tender and full of flavor. For dessert, the Star Deck Grill offers several varieties of frozen soft-serve yogurt.
As we ordered another round of watermelon daiquiris and enjoyed the sight of the sun setting over the mammoth yachts tied up on Lake Montauk, we realized a simple fact: this has got to be what summer is all about. – Amy Patton