Perched above the shimmering edge of Manhasset Bay, where the last amber light of a North Shore evening dissolves into the Manhattan skyline twenty miles westward, a 120-year-old restaurant has just reinvented itself without abandoning a single thread of its remarkable origin story. Louie’s Prime Steak & Seafood occupies one of Long Island’s most coveted waterfront positions — a stretch of Main Street in Port Washington where the pavement practically surrenders to the tide — and the current chapter of this establishment is arguably its most ambitious since a German immigrant anchored a floating barge in the middle of the bay and started cooking fish for sailors in 1905. That immigrant was Louis Zwerlein, and the vessel he christened the “Kare Killer” could only be reached by rowboat (Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society, 2024). Today, Louie’s requires no such maritime effort, though the spirit of that original audacity — serving the freshest catch on open water with nothing but the sky overhead — still courses through every plate of dry-aged prime beef and hand-rolled sushi that exits the kitchen.
As someone who has operated The Heritage Diner in Mount Sinai for a quarter century, I have a particular reverence for restaurants that survive long enough to become civic institutions. Most dining establishments collapse within five years. A handful endure a decade. To persist for over a century, through Prohibition and world wars, through ownership changes and neighborhood evolution, requires something that no amount of venture capital or Instagram marketing can fabricate: genuine belonging. Louie’s belongs to Port Washington the way the bay itself does — not as decoration, but as infrastructure. And the restaurant’s recent multi-million-dollar renovation under owner Jerry Sbarro and his partner Jorge Madruga represents a fascinating case study in how legacy establishments can modernize without severing the roots that made them matter in the first place.
From the Kare Killer to the Waterfront: Five Generations of Zwerlein Grit
The full history of Louie’s reads like a compressed epic of American immigrant ambition, and understanding it deepens every bite you take at the current restaurant. Louis Zwerlein emigrated from Kaiserlautern, Germany in 1837 and initially settled in College Point, where he ran a saloon and rose to the rank of Captain in the Enterprise Hose Company volunteer fire brigade (Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society, 2024). His family eventually relocated to Port Washington, and in 1905, they launched the Kare Killer — a floating restaurant anchored in Manhasset Bay that served fresh fish and generous pours of adult beverages to anyone willing to row out for the privilege. The establishment earned a colorful local reputation: legend has it that more than one husband, spotting his wife’s approaching boat from the Kare Killer’s deck, dove headlong off the far side and swam for Great Neck (Yelp Historical Notes, 2023).
Prohibition ended the Kare Killer’s run, but the Zwerleins pivoted with the resilience that defines enduring restaurant families. They opened a harborside shop selling chowder, steamers, clams, and lobsters while renting boats on the side. Then, in 1932, after the Town of North Hempstead cleared a row of squatters from the shoreline, the family relocated fifty yards south and opened the land-based restaurant that would become Louie’s (Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society, 2024). For the next seventy years, through five generations, the Zwerlein family operated the restaurant as a Port Washington landmark — the kind of place where sunsets over Manhasset Bay were part of the prix fixe, where prom dates mixed with retirees, and where the lobster bisque recipe remained a guarded family inheritance.
The Zwerleins sold the restaurant in 2002, after which it operated for two decades as Louie’s Oyster Bar and Grille under various management groups (Long Island Press, 2024). It retained its loyal following, its deck overlooking the bay, and its reputation as the quintessential Port Washington gathering place. But by the time Jerry Sbarro and Jorge Madruga acquired the property in 2022, the building — while still emotionally beloved — was showing every one of its years.
The Rothmann’s Connection: Jerry Sbarro’s Vision for a Year-Round Destination
Jerry Sbarro is not a newcomer to Long Island’s fine dining landscape. As the owner of Rothmann’s Steakhouse in East Norwich — itself a storied institution dating to 1907, with past ownership by Burt Bacharach and connections to Theodore Roosevelt — and multiple Matteo’s Italian restaurants in Roslyn and Huntington, Sbarro understands the particular alchemy required to honor tradition while executing at a level that meets contemporary expectations (Long Island Press, 2025). His Rothmann’s Restaurant Group now manages a portfolio of establishments that employ between 500 and 1,000 people across Long Island, and the group’s acquisition of Louie’s was motivated by something deeply personal.
Sbarro is a Port Washington native. He grew up walking the same Main Street where Louie’s sits, attended local schools, and has the kind of earned relationship with the community that money cannot simulate. When he acquired the restaurant with Madruga, the vision was clear: transform Louie’s from what had become, despite its legendary address, a seasonal waterfront venue into a year-round dining destination worthy of its 120-year pedigree. As Sbarro told the Long Island Press after the reopening: the restaurant sits not in Montauk or the Hamptons, yet it had been operating as if warm weather were the only reason to visit. He believed that if the food, service, and environment were elevated to the standard of a Rothmann’s, there was no reason Louie’s could not thrive twelve months a year (Long Island Press, 2025).
The restaurant closed for a complete renovation in October 2024. The redesign was led by Karen Velargo, who collaborated with Sbarro to reimagine the entire interior and exterior. Walls that once compartmentalized the dining experience were torn out to create openness and flow. The bar — previously tucked away and disconnected from the main room — was repositioned as the social centerpiece, open and integrated, drawing energy from the dining room around it. Floor-to-ceiling glass now frames the bay views from virtually every seat, and the overall aesthetic achieves what the best renovations of heritage spaces always aim for: a feeling that the building has somehow always looked this way, even though everything is unmistakably new (Long Island Press, 2025).
The Menu: Dry-Aged Prime Meets a Curated Raw Bar
The culinary program at the reopened Louie’s reflects Sbarro’s dual expertise in steakhouse excellence and waterfront seafood tradition. The kitchen now serves USDA Prime, 38-day dry-aged steaks — the same grade and sourcing pipeline that supplies Rothmann’s in East Norwich — alongside a meticulously curated raw bar featuring dressed East Coast oysters, jumbo shrimp, and hand-crafted sushi that rivals dedicated omakase counters. Fresh seafood arrives seven days a week, a commitment to sourcing that any restaurateur will recognize as both expensive and essential.
The expanded menu includes signature starters like sashimi flatbread, fig carpaccio, and hand-rolled burrata alongside heritage favorites such as the lobster shrimp bisque and jumbo lump crab cakes. Creative sushi rolls — the Chas. Roll, featuring seared filet mignon with spicy kani, avocado, and whiskey soy, stands out — represent the kind of cross-genre ambition that serious dining rooms increasingly embrace. Entrées range from the classic Porterhouse and bone-in ribeye to sesame-crusted tuna, seared scallops with butternut squash ravioli in sage brown butter, and whole grilled branzino. The Monday through Wednesday three-course dinner at $59.95 offers extraordinary value for the quality delivered, and insiders consistently flag it as the smartest way to experience the kitchen at its most focused.
The Sunday brunch has quickly become one of the most talked-about weekend experiences on the North Shore. An unlimited grand buffet features lobster, a raw bar, hand-carved prime steak, sushi, whole roasted fish, and an omelet station — the kind of comprehensive spread that transforms brunch from a meal into an event (OpenTable, 2026). The cocktail program is equally deliberate, with signature drinks like the East Coast Sunset and the Lotus earning dedicated followings among the bar-forward crowd.
Dining at the Edge of the Bay: Atmosphere and Experience
Understanding the atmosphere at Louie’s requires understanding what Manhasset Bay means to Port Washington. This is not merely a scenic backdrop — it is the defining geographic and cultural feature of a community that has organized its identity around the water for nearly four centuries. The Matinecock people fished these waters. Pan American flying boats departed from this bay for transatlantic crossings in 1939. John Philip Sousa composed here. F. Scott Fitzgerald used the eastern shore as his template for East Egg in The Great Gatsby (Port Washington Chamber of Commerce, 2024). When you sit at Louie’s and watch the light change across the bay, you are participating in a tradition of waterfront communion that predates every building on Main Street.
The renovated interior offers multiple distinct dining environments within a single cohesive space: a vibrant full-height bar that anchors the center; intimate booth seating along the walls; an open dining area with those signature floor-to-ceiling windows; and a private upstairs event room accommodating sixty to eighty guests, with panoramic bay views that make it one of the premier event spaces on the North Shore. The outdoor deck remains the crown jewel in warmer months — there are few dining experiences on Long Island that can compete with a Louie’s sunset in July, cocktail in hand, the marina lights beginning to flicker across the water.
Service, guided by management figures like Sheikh and front-of-house lead Hector — names that recur across dozens of positive reviews — reflects a hospitality ethos that prioritizes genuine welcome over performative formality. Chef Gregg Lauletta has also earned personal recognition from diners who appreciate the rare experience of a chef who moves through the dining room with intention and presence (TripAdvisor, 2025). The restaurant accommodates private events, celebrations, and corporate functions with a dedicated banquet manager, and its proximity to the Long Island Rail Road’s Port Washington Branch makes it uniquely accessible for guests commuting from Manhattan.
Port Washington: The Community That Sustains a 120-Year Restaurant
No restaurant survives 120 years without a community that actively sustains it, and Port Washington is precisely the kind of place that understands this reciprocal relationship. Located just seventeen miles from Midtown Manhattan on the Cow Neck Peninsula, Port Washington is a community of approximately 33,000 residents whose civic identity is inseparable from the waterfront. Main Street retains the character of a walkable village center — locally owned shops, restaurants that know your name, a performing arts theater, historic homes, and marinas that keep the bay populated with sailboats from spring through autumn (Port Washington Chamber of Commerce, 2024).
The town’s history of producing and sustaining legendary dining establishments is itself remarkable. Bradley’s once drew the Vanderbilts and the Astors. The now-vanished restaurants of Port’s past — The Riviera, Bill’s Harbor Inn, The Library, The Barge — each had their era, and each eventually closed. Louie’s outlasted them all, and that longevity is not accidental. It reflects the community’s willingness to patronize businesses that invest back into the neighborhood, that show up for local events, and that treat their address as a responsibility rather than a commodity.
Sbarro’s renovation has not been without discussion. In 2023, the restaurant’s application for site plan variances to expand the building drew both enthusiastic support and pointed opposition from neighboring residents, with concerns centering on parking, noise, and the impact of increased patronage on the surrounding residential streets (Long Island Press, 2023). The debate itself, however, testified to how deeply the community cares about this particular corner of Main Street. Supporters argued that the renovation would revitalize the waterfront commercial corridor and bring an aging structure into the modern era. Opponents asked legitimate questions about scale, traffic, and the preservation of neighborhood character. Both sides, notably, agreed on one thing: Louie’s matters.
The Larger Philosophy: Heritage Dining in an Age of Disposable Experience
From my vantage point — twenty-five years behind a griddle in Mount Sinai, where the cast iron absorbs the memory of every burger and every conversation — I find Louie’s renovation to be one of the more thoughtful examples of what I call heritage stewardship in the restaurant industry. The temptation, when you acquire a 120-year-old institution, is to either freeze it in amber out of misplaced nostalgia or gut it entirely in pursuit of something unrecognizable. Sbarro and his team have threaded the needle with unusual precision: the Kare Killer’s spirit of adventure survives in the sushi program’s ambition; the Zwerlein family’s commitment to the freshest possible catch lives on in the daily seafood deliveries; and the fundamental proposition that made Louie’s iconic — dinner on the water, watching the sun dissolve behind the skyline — remains the organizing principle of every design decision.
This is the approach I advocate across every domain I work in, whether it is building a Marcellino NY briefcase using hundred-year-old English bridle leather techniques or, with my wife Paola, preparing to bring a boutique real estate practice to the North Shore in 2026. The best things in life are not disposable. They develop patina. They reward patience. They connect generations to one another through shared experience. Louie’s, at 120 years and counting, is living proof.
Contact & Practical Information
Address: 395 Main Street, Port Washington, NY 11050
Telephone: (516) 883-4242
Website: louiessince1905.com
Reservations: Available via OpenTable
Delivery: Available via DoorDash
Hours:
- Monday–Thursday: 11:30 AM – 10:00 PM
- Friday–Saturday: 11:30 AM – 11:00 PM
- Sunday: 11:30 AM – 10:00 PM
Dining Format: Casual elegant — steakhouse and seafood
Price Range: $$$$ ($50–$100 per person)
Features: Full bar, outdoor waterfront deck, private event space (60–80 guests), wheelchair accessible, Sunday brunch buffet, raw bar, sushi bar, valet parking, LIRR-accessible via Port Washington Branch
Insider Tip: The Monday–Wednesday three-course dinner at $59.95 is the best-kept value on the North Shore. Book a window table for the sunset, and arrive early enough to start at the bar — it is now the social heart of the room.
Peter is the owner of The Heritage Diner in Mount Sinai, NY, founder of Marcellino NY bespoke leather goods, and holds graduate degrees in Philosophy from Long Island University and The New School in New York City.
