Few restaurants on Long Island carry 155 years of continuous narrative inside their walls. Claudio’s Waterfront, perched at the terminus of Main Street in Greenport Village where the asphalt surrenders to the harbor, is not merely a place to eat seafood — it is an artifact of American maritime ambition, Portuguese immigrant grit, and the North Fork’s stubborn refusal to become anything other than itself. The building that houses the main restaurant dates to approximately 1845 and sits on the National Register of Historic Places, a designation that speaks not to nostalgia but to consequence (National Register of Historic Places, 1945). When you step onto the dock at Claudio’s, you are standing where whaling fortunes were made and lost, where Prohibition-era rum runners slid their cargo through trap doors beneath the floorboards, and where four generations of a single family built what the National Restaurant Association once recognized as the oldest same-family-owned restaurant in the United States (National Restaurant Association, 2015). That run lasted 148 years. The family stewardship ended in 2018, but the name endures, and so does the gravitational pull of this waterfront campus — a pull that now extends from Greenport Harbor all the way to Atlantis Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
A Portuguese Whaler and the Birth of an Institution
The founding story of Claudio’s reads like something from a Melville chapter that never got published. In 1854, a Portuguese whaling vessel called the Neva, sailing from Fayal in the Azores, docked in Greenport — which was, at the time, one of the premier whaling ports on the Eastern Seaboard (Dan’s Papers, 2017). Aboard was a young sailor named Manuel Claudio, who would spend the next sixteen years at sea before accumulating enough savings to leave the ocean permanently. In 1870, Manuel walked ashore for the last time, never to sail again, and opened Claudio’s Tavern on lower Main Street (Edible Long Island, 2018). He later acquired the property at the Main Street Wharf and expanded the operation into a restaurant and hotel. The magnificent Victorian bar that still anchors the interior was salvaged by Manuel himself from a Bowery hotel being demolished in 1885 and installed in 1886 — a piece of old New York transplanted to the tip of the North Fork, where it remains to this day (Long Island Wine Country, 2016).
Manuel’s nephew Frank Claudio, also from Portugal, took the helm during Prohibition, transforming the downstairs into a fine French restaurant while the upstairs became what history politely calls a lively gathering spot for those who preferred their water glasses filled with something more spirited. Bootleggers would glide into the harbor under cover of fog, slipping beneath Claudio’s — which then stood on stilts — and offloading contraband through trap doors for the westward journey to New York City. One of those trap doors reportedly still exists behind the bar, repurposed for utility access (Northforker, 2025). Bill Claudio Sr. guided the operation for more than fifty years before the fourth generation took over in 1990, continuing the family voyage until the 2018 sale ended what had been a 148-year unbroken chain of Claudio family ownership.
The 2018 Sale and the New Stewards
When Jan and Bill Claudio, Kathy Claudio-Wyse, and Beatrice Tuthill announced the sale in March 2018, the North Fork community absorbed the news with the kind of complicated emotion that only attaches to places that have shaped the rhythm of people’s lives across generations (Patch, 2018). The property had been on the market since January 2015, with a previously proposed sale for $12.25 million falling through. The purchasing group — which included attorney Perry Weitz, his son David, Ian Behar, and Ryan Sasson — reopened in time for Memorial Day 2018, retaining all three restaurant names: Claudio’s Restaurant, Claudio’s Clam Bar, and Crabby Jerry’s (Suffolk Times, 2018). Tora Matsuoka of Sen Sushi in Sag Harbor and Stephen Loffredo of Seasoned Hospitality were brought on to manage operations, tasked with the formidable challenge of modernizing without destroying the soul of the place.
In 2025, a new partnership with Gansevoort Street Hospitality introduced further evolution. Crabby Jerry’s has been reimagined as Common Country East, a country-themed waterfront bar and restaurant. The original Claudio’s Tavern & Grill has become Charlie Boy at Claudio’s, an Italian-American café concept. But the flagship — Claudio’s Waterfront itself — remains essentially untouched in its identity, though it received an elegant cosmetic refresh with a blue-and-white color scheme, string lights, wicker lanterns, and the removal of the old plastic tables and heavy vinyl side panels (Northforker, 2025). The result is an airier, breezier iteration of the same waterfront dining experience that has drawn people to this dock for over a century and a half.
From Greenport Harbor to Paradise Island
Perhaps the most audacious chapter in Claudio’s modern history is its international expansion. In spring 2025, Claudio’s Bahamas opened at The Coral at Atlantis Paradise Island — a 378-seat waterfront restaurant that brings North Fork sensibility to the Caribbean (Resident Magazine, 2025). The menu fuses Claudio’s East Coast signatures with Bahamian ingredients: New England clam chowder made with Bahamian conch, the signature lobster roll reinterpreted with Caribbean spiny lobster, and exclusive island dishes like Kalik-battered Nassau grouper and conch fritters. Fiberglass sailboats hang from the ceiling, each named after classic Caribbean cocktails — the Bahama Mama, the Painkiller — in a design that bridges nautical Greenport with tropical Nassau. Juan Skinner, Claudio’s director of operations, framed the expansion as a way to amplify awareness of the North Fork itself, telling Northforker that the owners wanted people to understand that Long Island’s eastern reach offers something distinct from the Hamptons — quieter, more rooted, more real.
For those of us who have operated a single location for decades, the idea of scaling a heritage brand internationally raises fascinating questions about what transfers and what gets lost. A restaurant’s identity is partly its physical context — the harbor light, the specific salt air, the locals who remember when Bill Claudio Sr. was still behind the bar. But the Bahamas outpost suggests that what Claudio’s really sells is a philosophy of waterfront hospitality, a belief that fresh seafood, maritime atmosphere, and unpretentious warmth can hold their shape in any harbor town on earth.
The Menu and the Waterfront Experience
Claudio’s Waterfront operates seasonally, typically opening around Easter weekend and running through fall, with weather-dependent hours as temperatures drop. The restaurant is currently closed for winter and scheduled to reopen in April 2026 (TripAdvisor, 2025). During peak season, the dock comes alive with live music Thursday through Sunday, a covered stage at the pier’s end, and deep blue lounge couches positioned for what regulars call the best sunset hour on the North Fork.
The dinner menu leans into the classics with a few contemporary flourishes. Starters include Calamari Friti with chipotle aioli at $22, Baked Clams with Ritz cracker crumb and lemon butter at $22, Broiled Crab Cakes with citrus jalapeño remoulade at $24, and Razor Clams Casino with pancetta and Parmesan at $10 (Claudio’s Waterfront Dinner Menu, 2024). The Steamed Mussels in garlic and herbs with grilled ciabatta ($24) and the Mezze Platter ($24) round out the opening selections. Entrées center on the seafood that has defined this kitchen since Manuel Claudio’s era — lobster in multiple preparations, day-boat scallops, broiled sampler platters of swordfish, cod, shrimp, and scallops, and the fish and chips that remain a dock-side staple. The lobster cobb salad, recommended by longtime manager Jeannie Dohren — a 16-year employee married to a former lobsterman who once ran her own roadside lobster stand — has become a signature worth splitting two or three ways at $48 (Northforker, 2025). Monday brings the Lobster Bake, a weekly tradition that has become one of Greenport’s most reliable draws.
Drinks run approximately $17 per cocktail, consistent with current North Fork pricing. The bar program includes signature cocktails, a full wine list with some local North Fork wines represented, and the kind of frozen drinks that a waterfront setting demands during July and August.
Celebrity Visits and Cultural Footprint
Claudio’s cultural reach extends well beyond the North Fork dining circuit. In 2015, Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon visited the restaurant with his family and posted a photo of the iconic Claudio’s menu to his 4.2 million Instagram followers, captioning it with praise for the chowder and the people, and giving the establishment’s family ownership a national shout-out (Northforker, 2015). The History Channel has featured Claudio’s in programming about Prohibition-era rum runners, bootleggers, and moonshiners, and USA Today Travel highlighted it in a feature on America’s most historic restaurants (Suffolk Times, 2018). Around the walls of the main dining room hang photographs and artifacts from America’s Cup defenders — the great “J” boat racing ships that were outfitted just across the street at S.T. Preston’s. Over the front porch windows sits a piece of the main mast and lower spreaders of the yacht Enterprise, from Commodore Vanderbilt’s successful defense of the 1930 Cup Race — a relic that connects this restaurant to one of the most storied chapters in American competitive sailing.
Claudio’s also earned the Travelers’ Choice Award from TripAdvisor in 2025, placing it in the top 10% of restaurants worldwide based on consistent guest reviews — a remarkable achievement for a seasonal waterfront operation on the eastern tip of Long Island (TripAdvisor, 2025).
Greenport Village: The Context That Makes It All Work
Understanding Claudio’s requires understanding Greenport itself — a village that has always belonged, as Edible Long Island once wrote, to mariners, nomads, and pilgrims. The North Fork occupies a different psychic territory than the South Fork’s Hamptons. There is no celebrity-industrial complex here, no velvet ropes or $40 parking lots. Greenport is a working waterfront town that happens to also be extraordinarily beautiful, with a thriving art scene, antique shops, boutique wineries within a few miles’ drive, and a walkable downtown where the architecture still tells the story of nineteenth-century maritime prosperity. The Long Island Rail Road’s Greenport station sits at the end of the line — literally and figuratively. You come to Greenport on purpose, not en route to somewhere else.
This context is precisely what gives Claudio’s its enduring authority. A restaurant at 111 Main Street in Greenport is not competing with Manhattan’s relentless churn of concept restaurants and chef-driven pop-ups. It is competing with time itself — with the entropy that dissolves institutions and replaces them with forgettable alternatives. That Claudio’s has survived 155 years of economic cycles, world wars, Prohibition, the collapse of the whaling industry, the North Fork’s decades of relative obscurity, and the recent waves of East End gentrification speaks to something that cannot be manufactured: the gravitational pull of a place that knows exactly what it is and refuses to apologize for being that thing, decade after decade, century after century.
Practical Information
Address: 111 Main Street, Greenport, NY 11944
Phone: (631) 477-0627
Website: claudios.com
Reservations: Available via OpenTable
Instagram: @claudiosgreenport
Google Rating: 4.4 stars (2,288 reviews)
TripAdvisor: #3 of 63 restaurants in Greenport, Travelers’ Choice 2025
Price Range: $$ (Moderate)
Cuisine: Seafood, American
Seasonal Hours (Typical): Opens Easter Weekend through fall. Closed for winter. Scheduled to reopen April 2026. Summer hours approximately 11:30 AM–9:00 PM weekdays, with extended hours (until 2:00 AM) on Fridays and Saturdays. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays during shoulder season. Hours are weather-dependent in fall.
Marina: Accommodates boats up to 120 feet with private parking for guests
Features: Full bar, live music (Thursday–Sunday in season), outdoor waterfront seating, wheelchair accessible, dog-friendly areas, takes reservations, walk-ins welcome, offers takeout and delivery
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible
Payment: Visa, Mastercard, Discover accepted
DoorDash / Delivery: Available during operating season
Part of the Claudio’s Complex: Claudio’s Waterfront, Charlie Boy at Claudio’s (Italian-American café), Common Country East (country-themed waterfront bar), Little Charli’s Slice Shop, Claudio’s Marina
Also: Claudio’s Bahamas at The Coral at Atlantis Paradise Island — the brand’s first international location, opened 2025
Peter from the Heritage Diner has spent 25 years watching Long Island’s dining landscape evolve from behind the griddle at 275 Route 25A in Mount Sinai. He holds graduate degrees in Philosophy from Long Island University and The New School in New York City.
