Little Creek’s Big Idea: 10 years at the beloved Greenport oyster shack

Photos by David Benthal

It was the first week of April, and Little Creek in Greenport was getting ready to open for its 10th season on the waterfront. The beloved shack overlooking Gardiners Bay, in which two dozen people can barely fit standing up, has withstood more than its fair share of adversity in its decade of life: a global pandemic; numerous hurricanes; two contentious elections; and the near-doubling of North Fork real estate value. Still, Ian Wile and Travis Zurawski, co-owners of Little Creek, were excited. They were ready. They told everyone to come on down. 

Then the storm came.

“We were christened. Again!” Wile laughs on a recent, blustery spring afternoon. It was their third flood of 2024, but thanks to some infrastructure improvements, they managed to open just a few days later. 

“The nice thing is” — this is a phrase Wile, 52, uses a lot — “this building is not made of very much. Open up both doors, the water goes back out.”

The bright side

It’s very much in character for Wile to point out the silver linings. In 2020, with the restaurant closed and life on hold, Wile hosted virtual happy hours for the community and launched The Greenport Project—an online campaign that told the stories of local business owners and workers who depended on the town for their livelihood. 

Two years later, when he came across a neglected shack at Orient Beach State Park, Wile saw what it could be: a modern-day snack bar that pays homage to old-fashioned road trips and lighthearted summer fun. In under 30 days, the Sunshine Shack was open—and has entered its third season of lobster rolls, hot dogs, live music and, yes, oysters.

In Wile’s mind, it’s all part of a whole piece—Little Creek and the Sunshine Shack, old buildings and new endeavors. Origin stories matter to him. Little Creek doesn’t even have its name on the building; instead, there’s a hand-painted Bait/Tackle sign facing the Bay, where the structure spent its former life as the wheelhouse on a whaling ship, and, painted on the side of the building, the slogan: Hold Fast, Stay True.

“It was a bait shop for 130 years,” Wile explains, gesturing around the cozy space, full of nautical paraphernalia and photos of vintage oyster boats. “But it had been effectively shuttered for a decade. When we pitched the town to get it open, it was like, ‘Why would you want to be down there, there’s nobody there, it’s abandoned.’ Now some of those same people are like, ‘It’s too busy down there!’ You have to make up your mind. Did you prefer it abandoned? Or do you prefer it occupied?”

Occupied it is, on any given day. When the weather cooperates, the waterfront patio is full of locals and tourists, some of whom are carefully watching their server demonstrate how to shuck their own order (a discount on the price is offered for those make the effort). Little Creek is probably the only restaurant within 100 miles with shucking lessons on their menu—another element of their charm, not to mention a smart business practice. 

When it’s cold, windy, or pouring, folks crowd inside and find a corner in which to enjoy each other’s company along with a dozen of whichever variety of bivalve is on the menu that week. 

Sam Sifton, founding editor of New York Times Cooking, who has had a home in Greenport for 25 years, is often among them.

“Ian and his wife, Rosalie Rung, put magic into that little shack and surrounded it with more,” he says. “Plenty of people will tell you how great it is to kick back there in the sun opening oysters and drinking beer. But I think it’s best on a cold afternoon in the fall, with rain spitting down on the roof, slurping chowder at the bar. Something to look forward to!”

It’s not just friendly foodies who keep Little Creek going. The tiny restaurant has become the beating heart of the vibrant local oyster-farming community Wile helped nurture into resilience.

“Ian has been the glue for the oyster farming community. He’s like our therapist,” Matt Ketcham, who runs Peconic Gold Oysters, says. “If you have an issue, you talk to Ian and he will see what he can do.”

An aquacultural revolution

Some people’s answer to a midlife crisis is to buy a car. Wile leased an oyster farm, thanks to a Suffolk County program seeking to revitalize a once-vibrant oyster-farming community that had dwindled to near-extinction by 2008.

“Our timing was pretty fortuitous,” Wile says of that year, when he shuttered his film editing business in NYC and moved to the North Fork full-time with his family. “It was the beginning of an oyster renaissance in the Northeast.”

Even so, he wasn’t sure he’d be welcomed with open arms. 

“I’d mostly read and seen stories from Massachusetts, lobstermen blowing each other’s boats apart and that kind of stuff,” he laughs. “But because the industry here was only just beginning to reinvent itself, it was largely mutually supportive. That’s still representative of this oyster-growing community.”

Sue Wicks, who owns and operates Violet Cove Oyster Co., appreciates the connection between aquaculture past and present more than most—the former professional WNBA player’s family has been working on the water on Long Island for close to 400 years. 

“At Little Creek, Ian is having the same conversations my father had with my grandfather—how’s the tide, which way is the wind blowing, what’s running now?” she says. “You get that small town insider place but everyone is welcome. Building community is at the front of their mind all the time.” 

On any given day, you’ll see Wicks and her fellow oyster farmers come and go here, lugging dripping bags of clattering shells to the tiny kitchen, where chef Josue Rivara dishes out some of the town’s best ceviche, house-made trout sausage and three savory iterations of a landlubber’s hot dog.

And of course there are the oysters, named like garage bands, begging to be sampled: Mermaid Makeouts! Oysterpond Pearls! Ho Hums! Over the course of the season, northeastern varieties from about four dozen farms will make their way onto the menu, most from local waters. 

As delicious as they are, consumption is almost beside the point at Little Creek, which is a big part of its appeal. It’s that rare business that puts a premium not on profits, but on support for local farmers and the community in which they operate.

They appreciate his efforts—to say the least. 

“You can order oysters from Great South Bay, Moriches Bay, Gardiners, Block Island Sound, Peconic—top-grown, bottom-grown, everything,” Oysterponds Shellfish’s Phil Mastrangelo explains. “Chefs sit down, order oysters and say, ‘Hey, where did this come from?’ And Ian will say, ‘Here’s the farmer’s phone number.’ That is so great for our business, for us as an industry.”

The real deal

As if they don’t have enough on their plate, Little Creek’s founders have another endeavor in the works—a nonprofit organization called The Hold Fast Fund. At full throttle, the Fund plans to offer mentorship, emergency funds and even commercial rent subsidies to help incubate new, independent businesses in Greenport, with the ultimate goal of forestalling the bland, all-franchise fate of so many small towns.

Mattituck native Joe Finora, half of the sibling duo behind Hampton Oyster Company, puts a premium on preserving the character of the area he was born and raised in. “Little Creek has been pivotal in the rebirth of the Peconic oyster industry,” he says. “Ian and Rosalie have woven a deep authenticity into their brand and customer experience—authenticity that is often lost on the quickly changing North Fork.”

As if to punctuate the local point, a woman walking her dog wanders along the waterfront in the direction of Mitchell Park, veering off into Bootleg Alley, where Little Creek’s side door is propped open.

“Just the person I wanted to see!” she barks at Travis, standing behind the bar. “Can you explain to me what the f—is going on around here with the parking?”

He cannot; the conversation moves onto other topics until her pup tugs impatiently and she continues her walk. Wile goes back to the tasks at hand: a shipment of nonalcoholic canned drinks is opened and admired. More friends stop in. Rung takes inventory. Rivara agonizes over the Champions League semifinal until Real Madrid triumphs.

People begin arriving at 4 p.m. sharp for just what Little Creek’s website promises on its home page: Oysters. Food. Friends.