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\n Illustration: Javi Aznarez\n <\/p>\n
Sun is not the first thing you expect walking into Donohue\u2019s<\/a>. Maybe the last. But the light-dappled dining room, with its large windows and adjoining porch, is the new Donohue\u2019s, the beach-house Donohue\u2019s, a country cousin to the city elder. Even Maureen Donohue-Peters, Donohue\u2019s third-generation owner, looks a little different out here in a pink psychedelic-print Pucci-style blouse. Last summer, she opened Donohue\u2019s East<\/a> in Westhampton Beach. Had she gone a little Hamptons herself?<\/p>\n I am soon corrected. She is off duty; the white button-down and black trousers she wore behind the bar and waiting tables on Lexington Avenue these past 47 years are what she wears here. The business uniform remains unchanged. The look of the place is a far cry from the close quarters and blood-red tablecloths of the original, but it remains a place \u2014 quite possibly the Hamptons\u2019s only place \u2014 to get chopped steak and a Maryland turkey dinner, a Thanksgiving plate served year round. The community, she says, welcomed Donohue\u2019s, its city fame preceding it. \u201cYou know,\u201d the neighbors told her, \u201cwe need an Irish place.\u201d<\/p>\n Westhampton Beach represents a homecoming for Donohue-Peters, who grew up in nearby Hampton Bays before Hamptons development expanded this far along the NY-27 corridor. (Longtime Hamptonites will sneer that the East End doesn\u2019t even begin until Southampton; Donohue-Peters sneers back that she\u2019d never go past Bridgehampton.) But change is coming for Westhampton Beach \u2014 a PopUp Bagels and a Citarella both arrived in town this summer \u2014 so when a Donohue\u2019s customer from the city approached Donohue-Peters five years ago to consider opening here, she listened cautiously. \u201cI\u2019m willing to look,\u201d she told him. \u201cJust bring a pencil with an eraser.\u201d<\/p>\n The plan at first had been to run both establishments, but more recently, in a surprise to many fans of the original, Donohue-Peters decided to give up her lease and close it. She says crime was a factor (\u201cThe way the city is right now \u2014 I don\u2019t find safety\u201d), even though, according to NYPD data, crime in the 19th Precinct, where Donohue\u2019s was located, has dropped 15 percent in the past year.<\/p>\n Whatever the reason, the new one couldn\u2019t possibly replicate the city-room history or nicotine patina of the original. In a city of institutions, Donohue\u2019s was an institution. Its leather booths and a mid-century menu that\u2019s hardly been updated over its decades in business sated and sozzled generations. Mayors and commishes, newsmen when they still came stained with ink, ghosts of a city that barely exists anymore. Abe Rosenthal, the legendary executive editor of the New York Times, had his own table. So did the crew from the Times\u2019 upstart heel-nipper, the New York Observer. Gay Talese. Nick Pileggi and sometimes his wife, Nora Ephron. Sondheim and Stritch. Bill Bratton then; Jessica Tisch later. History hasn\u2019t smiled on all of its patrons \u2014 Bernie Madoff was a regular, as was Matt Lauer \u2014 but the Donohue family served everyone the same. \u201cI\u2019ve never had the time of day for people throwing their weight around,\u201d Donohue-Peters says. The loyalty was mutual: When a devoted regular, the \u201cKing of Ming\u201d art dealer Robert Ellsworth, died in 2014, Maureen and her niece, also Maureen, a waitress at the restaurant, were surprised to learn that he\u2019d tipped them $50,000 each in his will.<\/p>\n Donohue\u2019s operated the old-fashioned way. Its 212 phone number was printed on the menu page and every place mat, reservations were taken by phone with pad and pen, only longtime regulars could get any food delivered, checks were written out by hand, and the menu was largely the same one that Donohue-Peters\u2019s father, Michael, developed in the late \u201950s. (It was the rare place that could put a run on calf\u2019s liver when it was the day\u2019s special.) \u201cIt\u2019s worked so long for me. Why change?\u201d Donohue-Peters says. She joined the family concern in 1979 \u2014 \u201cNo one in the family wanted to work for him, except for me,\u201d she says, laughing \u2014 and after Michael\u2019s death in 2000, she ran the show with a succession of nieces and other relatives. Most evenings, she\u2019d be behind the bar, mixing up martinis (175 a night, she estimates) that came with sidecars \u2014 not in the polite, mixologist-approved bud-vase-size glassware but in beer pints.<\/p>\n There are more tables and a larger kitchen in Westhampton Beach, but the same red tablecloths, same pint-glass sidecars, and many of the same Donohue\u2019s classics are here. This is not the Moby\u2019s Hamptons. Generation Zepbound won\u2019t find much here to suit its needs any more than it would at the original. \u201cWe have a ton of salads because everyone\u2019s so weight conscious out here,\u201d Donohue-Peters says skeptically, but there\u2019s baked meatloaf on offer and the specials board still features various steaks. The most popular salad is the bacon-and-bleu-cheese wedge, and the new additions to the menu include loaded potato skins. Donohue\u2019s has never brooked food trends. \u201cWe\u2019re starting breakfast here, and we\u2019ll do smoked salmon and cream cheese, but that\u2019s as far as we will go,\u201d says Mary Barrie, Donohue-Peters\u2019s niece and partner.<\/p>\n Though the pair estimate that 30 to 40 percent of their clientele in the city spend some time on Long Island, Donohue\u2019s East hasn\u2019t gotten too much attention amid the lamentations surrounding the original\u2019s end. (Its final night of service was June 19<\/a>.) On a Saturday night early in the season, as \u201cSweet Caroline\u201d perfumed the dining room, a few tables of older families dined early and the place was largely quiet by 10 p.m., though a pair of Sutton Place residents were surprised to run into their co-op board president at the bar. Meanwhile, in the city, would-be successors have swarmed. Several restaurateurs and restaurant groups expressed interest \u2014 Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson\u2019s Frenchette Group said to be among them \u2014 and while the final decision rests with Donohue-Peters\u2019s landlord, a third-generation member of a real-estate family, she has been offering her opinions, and she\u2019ll decide what from the original restaurant, if anything, stays in Manhattan.<\/p>\n She will entertain offers on some of the original\u2019s fixtures and furnishings, like the five-piece mahogany bar her father built, though the old Donohue\u2019s telephone, the shillelagh behind the bar, and the ship painting her father loved are coming with her. As, most important, is her name. This summer, there is only one Donohue\u2019s, which is how things will remain for the foreseeable future. \u201cWe\u2019ve been offered big money for different licensing agreements,\u201d Donohue-Peters says, but she is not interested in selling. \u201cThey\u2019re not allowed to use my name \u2014 I will sue immediately. My father worked hard for it. I worked hard for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. Want more stories like this one? Subscribe now<\/a>
\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the June 22, 2026, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n
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\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the June 22, 2026, issue of
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