David A. Marcley doesn't like to give interviews and he doesn't really need to. Put enough dining-savvy South Forkers in the room and his 10-year-old restaurant on Montauk Harbor is sure to enter the conversation.
"My lifelong dream was never to be a chef, it was to be in the restaurant business," Mr. Marcley said on Friday. "But through necessity or evolution, it happened."
By all accounts, he's very good at it. Zagat's. 1998 Tri-State Restaurant Survey rated Dave's Grill the number one seafood restaurant on Long Island and one of the Island's top 25 restaurants, period.
"I love it," he admitted. "In the wintertime when I'm cooking at home, I'll cook all day and invite friends over and we'll just eat" Still, he says, "I keep thinking to myself, 'What do I want to be when I grow up?'"
Mr. Marcley has been working in restaurants since he was a teenager in Amityville. He's done almost every job in the field, from busing tables to managing to serving. Before he had even finished high School he was an assistant chef at a Montauk restaurant. Though he's the only one of nine brothers and sisters to go into the business, at this point, it's in his blood, His wife and business partner, Julie, shares this intense interest. "Food and wine are a big part of our lifestyle," he said.
Drawn to Montauk for the surf and surfcasting; Mr. Marcley moved here permanently in 1979 and four years later opened the restaurant Tomatoes in Amagansett with a partner. Tomatoes burned down a year later. After that, Mr. Marcley was the manager at the Port Royal in Montauk until he bought an old fishermen's break fast joint called Pete's Viking Grill at the fishing docks on Montauk Harbor. Julie helped renovate the place and has managed the "front of the house" ever since. She is also a jazz singer and often sings at the restaurant in the spring and fall, using the name Julie Sheldon.
He handles the kitchen, she orders the wine, and between November and April they travel the hemisphere or the country or the city of Manhattan indulging their gourmet passions and keeping up with the latest culinary trends. For him, inspiration comes not from one particular restaurant or cuisine, but from getting out and trying as many places as possible. The couple went to Italy one year, to Paris another. They've also been to Seattle and Northern California recently and in New York they hop all over the map. "The travel aspect of this business is really important," Mr. Marcley said.
The Dave's Grill menu reflects an array of influences. There's pepper-seared tuna "served sushi rare," the old standby clams casino, and coconut fried shrimp. Montauk flounder with an onion and potato crust is a Dave's classic, and entrees like steamed halibut with a citrus-beet syrup and Swiss chard or shrimp Indonesian with mussels in a carrot Curry sauce show his versatility.
Mr. Marcley also continues to study at the Culinary Institute of America. This winter he took a course on the "multicultural kitchen," a title that aptly describes his own kitchen ~ he's just hired an Israeli sous-chef and has an Antiguan on staff as well.
In Montauk, Dave's Grill was one of the first restaurants to move beyond the standard fish and chips or family fare into what has come to be known as "contemporary American cuisine." His clientele is "pretty sophisticated;" he said, but includes local foodies and even some of the fishermen who once frequented Pete's Viking Grill as well as big city gourmands.
"People feel welcomed," he said, and that is the key to success.
"People eat the atmosphere as well as the food," he explained. Sitting on the patio of his restaurant, diners can easily lose themselves in the rhythm of Montauk harbor life.
He's tried other locations: He was an owner of the downtown Montauk restaurant called Dave's Downtown, which became the Downtown Grille and now Oyster Pond. But when people tell him he needs to open another eatery somewhere else, he always wonders, "Can you eat the atmosphere there, too?"
By Carissa Katz
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