“Lundy Bros. is Famed for its delicious Sea Food.”
Lundy’s Restaurant
1926–1979; December 6, 1995–2007
Seafood
Alternate Names:
Lundy Brothers Restaurant & Clam Bar
The Original F.W.I.L. [Frederick William Irving Lundy] Lundy Brothers Restaurant & Clam Bar
Ownership:
The Players Club, Afrodite Dimitroulakos (2004–2007)
Tam Restaurant Group, Frank & Jeanne Cretella (1995–2004)
[Having closed in 1979, the restaurant was sold in 1981. At the time of the building’s designation by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1992, the Lundy’s building was owned by the Seaside Restaurant Development Corporation, which expressed interest in reopening the restaurant. However by the time of reopening in 1995, the building appears to have changed hands again, with the Sheepshead Bay Restaurant Associates finally handing over the management of Lundy’s to Tam Restaurant Group.]
Lundy Family (1977–1979)
Irving Lundy (1926–1977)
Executive Chef:
Ken Larsen (2005)
John C. O’Connell (1997)
Neil Kleinberg (c. 1995)
Location:
Winter Garden Theatre Building, 205 West 50th Street (2001–2003)
1901-1929 Emmons Avenue, Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn (1934–2007)
Pier off Emmons Avenue, between Ocean Avenue and East 21st Street (1926–1934) [Pier demolished, 1934.]
Literature:
Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach (2017):
“After ‘Shore Dinners’ at Lundy’s famous restaurant, followed by slices of huckleberry pie, Anna changed into an old satin negligee of her aunt’s, stained under the arms” (Corsair, 2017: 416).
Publications:
Del Mastro, Addison. “What Do You Think You’re Looking At? #154: The Shell of the Clam (Bar).” The Deleted Scenes. Blog, March 20, 2024.
Van Aken, Norman. “Mimi Sheraton: Our ‘Kitchen Conversation’ 2015.” Norman Van Aken. Blog, April 8, 2023.
Harris, Gale. “F.W.I.L. Lundy Brothers Restaurant.” NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, January 2019 (illustrated).
Colwell, Tess. “POTW: Lundy’s Restaurant.” Brooklyn Public Library. Blog, November 28, 2018 (illustrated).
“Lundys of Sheepshead Bay by Kingsborough Community College.” Kingsborough Blog, September 21, 2016 (illustrated). [Includes a reader-submitted recipe for ‘Lundy’s Angry Lobster. The segment on the history of Mimi Sheraton’s family and the restaurant is reprinted from Bill Bence’s 2009 blog entry below.]
“Lundy’s – Lundy Brothers Restaurant.” Brooklyn Relics. Blog, December 19, 2015 (illustrated).
Colwell, Tess. “Lundy’s Restaurant.” Brooklyn Public Library. Blog, November 18, 2015.
Sietsema, Robert. “Long Lost and Lamented: Lundy Brothers, 1920-1979.” Eater New York, January 29, 2015 (illustrated). [This article is a snippet summary of an hour-long podcast, no longer accessible.]
Cook, Dave. “Lundy Brothers Restaurant.” Eating in Translation. Blog, November 25, 2014 (illustrated). [Features photos of surviving architectural details from the restaurant.]
Sietsema, Robert. “Five Dead and Gone Classic Brooklyn Restaurants.” Village Voice, March 31, 2011.
White, Norval, Elliot Willensky, and Fran Leadon. AIA Guide to New York, 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010: 729.
Bence, Bill. “Lundy’s.” A Week in New York April 1946. Blog, February 8, 2009. [Reprinted as part of the 2016 Kinsborough Blog article above.]
Frommer, Myrna Katz, and Harvey Frommer. It Happened in Brooklyn: An Oral History of Growing Up in the Borough in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2009: 105-107 (illustrated), 237.
Manbeck, John. “Historically Speaking: Lundy’s a Fishy Tale.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 8, 2007.
Hays, Elizabeth. “Lundy’s New Lineup: Full Menu of Changes at Fabled Restaurant.” New York Daily News, February 27, 2005: 1.
Sheraton, Mimi. Eating My Words: An Appetite for Life. New York: William Morrow & Co., 2004.
Cuozzo, Steve. “Call It Dread Lobster – At Lundy’s, Old Name and the Sea Don’t Mix.” New York Post, August 29, 2001. [Regarding Lundy’s short-lived and rather unsuccessful branch at Times Square.]
Viorst, Nick. “The Once and Future Lundy’s.” In Charles W. Robbins and Wendy Palitz, Brooklyn: A State of Mind. New York: Workman Publishing, 2001: 279-282.
Mariani, John with Alex Von Bidder. The Four Seasons: A History of America’s Premier Restaurant. New York: Smithmark, 1999: 10.
Cornfield, Robert. Lundy’s: Reminiscences and Recipes from Brooklyn’s Legendary Restaurant. New York: William Morrow, 1998. [A recipe from the book for Lundy’s Ultimate Biscuits can be found on The Recipe Circus website.]
Leduff, Charlie. “The Brigands of the Clams.” New York Times, February 23, 1997: 4. [Brief mention of Lundy’s, but establishes John C. O’Connell as executive chef at the time.]
Merlis, Brian, Lee A. Rosenzweig, and I. Stephen Miller. Brooklyn’s Gold Coast: The Sheepshead Bay Communities. New York: Sheepshead Bay Historical Society, 1997 (illustrated on cover).
Martin, Douglas. “Sheepshead Bay at Odds on a Waterfront Proposal.” New York Times, July 19, 1993: B3. [Regarding the proposed reopening of Lundy’s. Features a picture of the murals created on the doors of the restaurant during closure.]
“Panel Rejects Fee for Landmark Buildings.” New York Times, March 4, 1992: B2.
Fabricant, Florence. “Food Notes.” New York Times, January 25, 1992: C2. [Regarding Lundy’s reopening.]
Harris, Gale. F.W.I.L. Lundy Brothers Restaurant Building [designation report, list 243]. New York: New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, 1992 (illustrated, including photographs of the site prior to construction of the restaurant).
Stallworth, Lyn, and Rod Kennedy, Jr. The Brooklyn Cookbook. New York: Knopf, 1991. [Features a recipe for Lundy’s clam chowder.]
Jetter, Alex, and Annelise Orleck. “A Mistrust of Strangers: The Haunted Days of Irving Lundy.” Newsday, September 24, 1989.
Jetter, Alex. “Lundy’s Again Center of Attention: Restaurant a Focus of Controversy.” Newsday, February 9, 1989.
Ginsberg, Stan. “Down to the Sea by Subway.” New York, August 21, 1978: 52.
“No matter where on earth you might set the place down it would immediately be taken for what it is – a singularity.”
Kihss, Peter. “2 in Lundy Family Slain in Burglary.” New York Times, September 19, 1975: 1.
White, Norval, and Elliott Willensky. AIA Guide to New York, 1st ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Javanovich, 1967: 339.
James, Rian. Dining in New York. New York: John Day Company, 1930: 254.
“The best assorted seafood in these parts, served a few hours after it’s caught.”
Notable Guests:
James Brady (Columnist): “[I recall] being taken by my father to Lundy’s on a Sunday morning after
church when he would stand at the clam bar and eat a dozen clams or oysters and I nibbled those little crackers they called Oysterettes.” (1)
Diamond Jim Brady (Businessman): Coined the term “surf and turf” with regard to the lobster and steak meals he consumed at Lundy’s. (2)
Mimi Sheraton (Food Critic):
“The original Lundy’s was built out on stilts in the bay. Most people remember the newer one that was built but I remember the one out in the bay. I remember being so young that they put telephone books on the chair for me so I could reach the table. The aromas of things… that my family was crazy about… clams on the half shell, lobsters, biscuits, huckleberry pie…” (3)
“Clams are my Brooklyn summers at Manhattan Beach and Sheepshead Bay when Lundy’s was Lundy’s and had an outside clam bar… Whenever we came back from the beach, me and my friends, we would stop at that window and get half a dozen cold, wet clams after a day in the saltwater and the sun.” (4)
Wendy Wasserstein (Playwright): Regarding Mother’s Days at Lundy’s in the mid-1950s: “I…recall a vast dark, medieval hall where waiters shoved by with plates piled high with steamers and lobster tails and my brother and I tossed hot biscuits.” (5)
Notes:
From humble beginnings selling clams from a pushcart, “by the early 1880s the Lundy Brothers were prominent wholesalers of fish, clams, and oysters, operating stores in both Sheepshead Bay and Coney Island.” As a teenager in the years preceding World War I, young Irving Lundy even established his own clam stand, later claiming “he had numerous employees by the time he reached the age of sixteen.” (6)
Irving Lundy purchased the pier where the family fish business in Sheepshead Bay was located in 1923. Following the death of two of his brothers, Lundy opened the first F.W.I.L. Lundy Brothers Restaurant in 1926 on the site of the family’s fish market. (7)
A Sheepshead Bay renewal project in the 1930s led to the demolition of piers along Emmons Avenue, including the pier on which Lundy’s was situated. Lundy acquired land on the north side of Emmons Avenue for the construction of a new restaurant. According to a contemporary newspaper, “the building was completed in time to synchronize ‘the shucking of the last clam in the old place with the unveiling of the first clam in the new.'” (8)
The new Lundy’s was designed by prominent architecture firm Bloch & Hesse and constructed in the Spanish Colonial Revival or Mission style, rare for the New York area, and “appears to be the sole survivor of the style among pre-World War II restaurant buildings in New York.” (9) This new building was constructed on the site of the 1862 Bayside Hotel and Casino, which was incorporated into the restaurant. Crushed clam shells were embedded into the cement for luck. (10)
Lundy’s supposedly continued to serve alcohol during prohibition, contributing to its popularity. (11)
A short-lived branch of Lundy’s was opened in Times Square’s Winter Garden Theatre Building at 205 West 50th Street (also known as 1638 Broadway) in 2001. (12) The space had been vacant for over a decade following the closure of Polynesian restaurant Hawaii Kai. In 2003 the site became home to the world’s largest Applebee’s.
It is believed by some that the lobster bib was invented at Lundy’s (13), although an Internet search will produce a number of alternative origins for the fashionable lobster-eating accessory (see Forbes, “The Origin and Development of the Lobster Bib” to be alternately perplexed and amused).
These photographs in the New York Public Library collection show the development of the Lundy’s site from the 1920s to the construction of the 1934 restaurant.
Lundy’s was designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1992.
The space became the Lundy’s Landing Shopping Plaza, and as of 2024 is occupied by several businesses including Turkish café Masal, Momo Hibachi Steak House & Bar, a branch of the Neapolitan restaurant Patrizia’s, and supermarket Cherry Hill Gourmet.
The archived restaurant website can be accessed here.
The Restaurant Ware Collectors Network features china from Lundy’s.
North Carolina artist Kathleen Gwinnett painted a watercolor of the Lundy’s exterior in her “Brooklyn Memories” series. Reproductions are available on Etsy.
Menu:
Menu, undated (Culinary Institute of America)
Cover photo: Pre-1947 postcard of Lundy’s. In Gale Harris, “F.W.I.L. Lundy Brothers Restaurant.” NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project, January 2019. Accessed September 13, 2024.
(1) Brady, James. “Keeping Intact a Small Town that Lives within a Great City.” Crains, May 15, 1989. Quoted in Harris, 1992: 4.
(2) Lyons, Richard. “A Party Fleet Tries Not to Founder.” New York Times, June 9, 1991: 48.
(3) Quoted in Van Aken, 2023.
(4) Raisfeld, Robin, and Rob Patronite. “Mimi Sheraton Shares Her Favorite Dishes in New York.” Grub Street, February 8, 2015.
(5) Wasserstein, Wendy. “Mom Says Every Day Is Mother’s Day.” New York Times, May 13, 1989: 25.
(6) Harris, 1992: 3.
(7) ibid.
(8) ibid.: 4.
(9) ibid.: 1.
(10) Bence, 2009.
(11) ibid.
(12) Cuozzo, 2001.
(13) Bence, 2009; “Lundy Bros.” Time Out, February 24, 2010.
The New York City Restaurant Archive 