Thomas Wolfe’s observation that “you can’t go home again” is about to be tested again. This time I fear I already know the outcome. The test subject is Lundy’s (aka Lundy Brothers), the seafood restaurant that reputedly did 10,000 dinners at a clip in its heyday.
Much about the Lundy’s experience is on a mythic scale. Its home was an enormous 2000-seat, SoCal-style villa with walls of stucco and a clay barrel-tiled roof. Its address back then was on Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn. For a little pre-dinner exercise, you could walk across the foot bridge over the bay to Manhattan Beach and back. (You could count on getting additional exercise shifting your feet as you waited at a table whose occupants were sipping coffee or settling their check; reservations were not taken.)
I haven’t yet visited the restaurant’s new digs in Red Hook, but I already feel as though it is a thousand memories away from the original.
Some of the dishes of my youth are still on the menu — the incomparable clam bisque, the amazing biscuits, the broiled lobster, the blueberry pie that I would order with a scoop of butter pecan ice cream. Gone (alas) is the crabmeat au gratin. And the biscuits, which were free and abundant, appear under “Appetizers,” which suggests they are now fee for service.
A few new dishes have been added — among them a lobster roll and a cheesesteak with aged prime rib — but they feel like interlopers.
I will attempt to get in touch with members of my old crowd and arrange a visit. If I make it, I’ll keep you posted.
Lundy’s, 44 Beard Street (at Dwight St.), Brooklyn.
