As Northforker reported, Andrew DeRobertis was driving out to meet a friend in early 2025 when he spotted the sign. It was posted outside a squat building on West Montauk Highway that most people in Hampton Bays could place without thinking twice: the old Friendly's, empty since 2017, then briefly something else, then something else again. "The sky opened up and it gave me a ray of light," he told 27east. What he was looking at wasn't obvious to most drivers passing by. To Andrew, it was an opening.
That building has a varied restaurant history. After Friendly's closed in 2017, the space hosted Hamptons Standard, Salvatore's, and Barona Bay before DeRo's Food & Family opened in 2025. The sequence offers a look at the different restaurant concepts found in Hampton Bays.
Five Restaurant Names, One Address
A 27east report traces the storefront's recent history: Friendly's closed in 2017. Two years later, restaurateur Salvatore Biundo opened Hamptons Standard in the space, only to be served papers for trademark infringement by Standard International, the hospitality group behind The Standard Hotel in Manhattan. He renamed it Salvatore's and swapped the continental menu for Italian. Then came Barona Bay in 2023, a New American and European concept that, as one local business report put it, didn't last long. By the fall of 2024, the building was empty again and back on the market.
Here's the timeline laid out plainly:
| Restaurant | Approximate Years | What Happened |
|---|---|---|
| Friendly's | Closed 2017 | Long-running chain location shuts down |
| Hamptons Standard | 2019 | Opened, then hit with a trademark infringement claim from Standard International |
| Salvatore's | 2019–2023 | Renamed, pivoted to an Italian menu |
| Barona Bay | 2023–2024 | New American/European fusion, short-lived |
| DeRo's Food & Family | 2025–present | Opened by brothers Andrew and Evan DeRobertis |
Since 2019, the address has hosted four restaurant concepts: Hamptons Standard, Salvatore's, Barona Bay, and DeRo's Food & Family.
Different Restaurant Settings in Hampton Bays
Hampton Bays has been shaped by water since before it had a name people would recognize today. The hamlet sits between the Great Peconic Bay to the north and the Shinnecock and Tiana bays to the south, linked by the Shinnecock Canal. The hamlet's geography gives restaurants different settings: some are on the water, while 149 West Montauk Highway is on a highway corridor.
One kind of restaurant here sells a view along with the food. Sundays on the Bay sits on Dune Road with sunsets over the water built into the experience. Edgewater looks out over Shinnecock Bay from a deck built for exactly that purpose. Amalfi Coastal Kitchen & Cocktails opened as a waterfront concept explicitly built around the bay setting. R.AIRE, tucked inside the longstanding Hampton Maid property, sells an evening built around chef-driven tapas and a curated wine list in a destination-dining frame. These places can draw a diner from Manhattan or a weekend renter on Dune Road who is choosing an experience, not just a meal. The water does a lot of the selling.
The other kind of restaurant here has none of that. It sits on the highway, in a stretch that also holds fast food and strip retail, with a parking lot instead of a dock. A restaurant in that spot can't charge a view premium and can't count on a seasonal wave of vacation renters wandering in off a beach walk. It has to earn repeat business from people who live here year-round, which means it has to be good enough, affordable enough, and familiar enough that a family in Hampton Bays chooses it on a random Tuesday in February, not just a Saturday in July.
The earlier concepts took different forms: Hamptons Standard was renamed Salvatore's, and Barona Bay was a New American and European concept. DeRo's menu and stated focus on local customers offer another approach at the same address.
DeRo's Food & Family's Approach
Andrew and Evan DeRobertis didn't come to this cold. Their father, Paul DeRobertis, owned and ran Paul's Italian Restaurant on Hill Street in Southampton for 50 years before selling the business in 2023. Both brothers grew up working there. Andrew has said the first place he came home to from the hospital as a newborn was the restaurant. That's not branding language, it's the actual origin of how they think about the business.
When they opened DeRo's Food & Family in the spring of 2025, they built a menu of chicken parmesan, shrimp francese, tacos, and burgers, priced for a family to come back weekly rather than once a season, and Andrew told 27east: "What my father taught us about the restaurant business is you have to take care of the locals." Their clientele now comes from East Hampton, East Quogue, Riverhead, and Southampton as much as from Hampton Bays itself, which suggests the model is working beyond just filling a neighborhood gap.
The details reinforce the strategy rather than decorate it. The brothers bottle their own condiment line, Hampton Dressing Company, including a Caesar dressing based on their grandmother's 80-year-old recipe, a product that started because customers at their father's restaurant kept asking to buy it. The restaurant added a liquor license after opening and has run rotating specials like a Monday martini-and-meatball combo priced for a weeknight, not a special occasion. There are wall panels inside dedicated to highlighting good deeds in the community.
As fall begins, DeRo's has been open for roughly a year and a half. The storefront's history is still unfolding.
A Community Event Beyond the Summer Season
The Hampton Bays Harvest Festival offers another snapshot of community life beyond the restaurant scene. On September 26, the Hampton Bays Harvest Festival returns to the lawn between the Hampton Bays Community Center on Ponquogue Avenue and Southampton Town Hall, bringing local produce, art, live music, and children's entertainment. It is a town gathering on a municipal lawn as the summer rental season winds down.
The festival and the restaurant histories offer different snapshots of Hampton Bays beyond the summer season.
What to Watch on This Stretch of Highway Now
Waterfront restaurants such as Sundays on the Bay, Edgewater, Amalfi, and R.AIRE offer a different setting from a highway storefront. DeRo's menu and stated focus on local customers provide one example of a restaurant approach at 149 West Montauk Highway.
If DeRo's continues through another winter, its tenure at the address will continue to grow. Its progress will be one part of Hampton Bays' continuing restaurant story.
If you're weighing what a specific corner of Hampton Bays, or any hamlet along the East End, actually tells you about its long-term character rather than its seasonal surface, that's the kind of read Michael Petersohn brings to every conversation. Request a Personal Market Consultation to talk through what you're seeing on the ground here, and what it might mean for your own plans.
