The force driving aMano, A Lure Chowder House & Oysteria, Southold Social and By Hand Catering is in no small part the excellent food. But the names of these locales offer a clue to another aspect of restaurateur Adam Lovett’s secret sauce — as well as what matters to him.
Think about it: aMano (by hand); A Lure, a fun play on both enticement and our seaside specialties; and, of course, the gathering aspect implied in the name Southold Social.
Lovett’s not the type to hide behind a desk or in an office running the show from afar. He and his right-hand men and women are familiar faces to locals and visitors, who have brought years of sustained success to his businesses for just that reason: He and his staff make you feel at home.
“You can train people on how to do things but you can’t train them to be people people,” says Lovett’s longtime business partner and chef Tom Schaudel. “He was always a people person. He’s outgoing, he’s friendly, he’s knowledgeable.”
And as far as his restaurants go, that’s a recipe for success.
From Punk to Plates du Jour
The restaurant seed was planted early in a young Lovett. At just 14, he filled in for his brother, Joseph, on occasion as a dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant in their native Queens. He also worked as a bus boy, served scoops at a local ice cream shop and delivered newspapers. At the end of high school, Lovett enrolled at Queens College with a plan to study elementary education but had already begun to envision something else for his future.
“I had this dream of having a restaurant and the kids that were in my class, that were getting into trouble —using them in my restaurant,” says Lovett. “Growing up in Queens, I got into a lot of trouble and it wasn’t until I started working in the restaurant business that it really kind of saved me.”
Shortly after starting his undergraduate degree, a friend’s father homed in on Lovett’s previous restaurant experience and offered him a job at his then-newly opened fine dining eatery, the Mill River Inn in Oyster Bay.
It was a different type of service than Lovett was used to, as it followed formal practices of “serve from the left, clear from the right,” no trays and each server carrying a maximum of just two plates. In 1989, Lovett started there as a bus boy and was eventually promoted to food runner, observing and learning what it meant to work in a fine-dining restaurant.
For Tom Schaudel, Liz Werkmeister and Adam Lovett, their team’s varying skill sets and willingness to step up where needed are what have kept the restaurants not just up and running, but thriving, drawing locals and visitors to their year round spots and to the shore when the weather warms up. (Photo credit: Madison Fender)
“I would just eat meat and potatoes until Mill River Inn and then I was trying these [new] dishes, and I was trying new foods and I was getting inspired and excited,” he remembers. “I had no idea what hospitality was going to be for me.” Or what he was going to do for it.
The more Lovett worked, the more he saw that his destiny wasn’t in the education field. So in 1992, he left Queens College and enrolled in hospitality courses at Nassau Community College.
Simultaneously, Lovett was getting familiar with the East End, waiting tables in the Hamptons. His first summer season was spent in Westhampton Beach working at the eponymous (and popular) restaurant Starr Boggs.
“I drove out in my ‘75 Cadillac Coupe DeVille. It was my first time on Dune Road and I walked into Starr Boggs, which was on the ocean,” Lovett recalls. “I saw blue and I instantly fell in love.”
In 1995, Larry Finnegan, a high school friend of Lovett’s, asked if he wanted to co-manage the Inn on Sugar Bay, a restaurant that Finnegan’s father owned on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. Lovett jumped at the opportunity to move up the ladder, but his time in Montserrat lasted just six months. The job was cut short when the Soufrière Hills volcano erupted, destroying the island’s capital and causing two-thirds of the population to evacuate, including Lovett.
Still, the fleeting experience proved valuable.
“In every job I ever had, I either learned what to do in the restaurant business or what not to do,” says Lovett. “Montserrat was probably more of what not to do. I was young, it was my first management position — interacting with staff, learning how to price things — but it was a learning experience because prior to that I had never had anyone train me to do management.”
Back in New York with more determination than ever, Lovett quickly picked up work waiting tables on Long Island again and transferred all his college credits to the New York City College of Technology to continue his education in baking, culinary, cost control and dining room management.
Come summer 1998, Lovett’s hard work paid off with a coveted position managing Starr Boggs. At the end of the season, Michael Skurnik, a wine importer and distributor, offered him a job in sales.
In a previous role managing Focaccia Grill in Wantagh, Lovett had met Skurnik when he came to visit the restaurant to put a face to the name of the buyers in the western Long Island town. The two reconnected when Skurnik was dining one day at Starr Boggs. When he learned that Lovett didn’t have set-in-stone plans after the summer season, he recruited him.
Lovett began selling wine to on-premise accounts and connecting with industry professionals, one of whom would become his future business partner: Schaudel, an esteemed chef and Long Island restaurateur.
True fulfillment still felt evasive.
“It was not a terrible job for someone who was really inspired by the industry,” says Lovett. “But I missed the restaurant business.”
By Hand and By Sea
In 2005, Lovett bought into and operated his first restaurant, Vespa, in New York City. The Northern Italian turned “creative” Italian spot was on Second Avenue between 84th and 85th streets. Lovett and his then-business partner refined the brand and literally cleaned up the space, scrubbing the walls. They installed a sound system and DJ booth and cut a hole in the wall to separate the kitchen and dining room, making for an interactive experience. In one year, their sales doubled.
Despite the success, Lovett stepped away from Vespa a few months later, looking for a lifestyle change. For about a year he bartended and worked with his brother, who was DJing at the time, unsure if he’d stay in the restaurant business at all.
One of his bartending gigs was at Café Continental in Manhasset, where he met a group of people looking to bring new life to his old stomping grounds at the since-closed Starr Boggs, which had later become Patagonia West.
“It was a very short period of time [out of the industry] but I was ready to jump back in, so I did,” says Lovett.
Lovett became a partner of the reopened Patagonia West, bringing him back east. Soon after, he opened PassionFish in Westhampton with Schaudel as partner.
“He’s good at the numbers game, he’s good at employee juggling — personalities, motivation, this, that, and the other thing,” says Schaudel of his longtime business partner. “And he’s good at food and wine. You can’t get a better guy than that.”
The seafood-heavy menu, inspired by Schaudel’s time at Syosset’s Coolfish, worked well with the setting. When the pair lost the lease after one season, they found themselves in Jamesport at Jedediah Hawkins Inn, where Schaudel was a partner. For the first time, Lovett got a taste of the tight-knit North Fork food and wine scene.
“We were selling Paumanok’s wines and [founders] Charles and Ursula Massoud were doing the wine tasting and the wine dinner in the restaurant,” says Lovett. “We were carrying local produce and I’m meeting farmers and everyone was supporting everyone. Coming from the city, you didn’t see that.”
Lovett left Queens and planted roots on the North Fork in 2008. He opened aMano in Mattituck, another venture with Schaudel, who pushed for an Italian concept stocked with North Fork wine and local produce.
“We first met Adam at aMano maybe a year after [they] started it,” says regular Alexandra Papadopoulos. “He had a big warm smile, a very kind, respectful manner about him and made us feel very at home in his restaurant from the start.”
Thanks to glowing New York Times and Newsday reviews, there was a line out the door upon opening. The ever-changing menu has remained highly desired by return customers but some beloved dishes have stayed put since the start, including chicken scarpa, a play on the classic chicken scarpariello (‘shoemaker’s chicken’) that came from Vespa.
Over time, aMano became a confidence booster for Lovett — not because he was unsure about his abilities but because, in the fickle restaurant world, getting something to stick can be just about the hardest thing to achieve. After two years getting into a groove with Schaudel and the North Fork community, Lovett set his sights on the sea and, in 2010, opened A Lure at Port of Egypt with Schaudel and chef Jeffrey Uguil. A decade and change later came the ever-packed Southold Social.
The culinary themes may have traveled from Etruscan comforts to East End treasures to eclectic comfort food, but each restaurant has remained true to their anchoring premises of local wine and fresh closely sourced food, enforcing the “all in this together” mentality Lovett has always felt on the North Fork.
The secret sauce
From aMano and A Lure to By Hand Catering and Southold Social, Lovett’s been careful to curate a trusted team who believes in the same brand of welcoming hospitality that he does ¬– which is to say he always goes the extra mile and then some.
When he was working on refurbishing and retrofitting a 1971 Ford fire truck as a pizza purveyor on wheels for the By Hand Catering wing of his business, he was approached by Stu and Kathy Grossman to cater their son Keith’s wedding. When they heard about the plans for a pizza truck, their eyes lit up: Would it be ready in time for the wedding?
“My son is a volunteer fireman and when he mentioned that Adam said, ‘Okay, I’m going to make sure I get it refurbished in time for your wedding,’” says Stu. “That’s the little things he does that tell you this is a really good guy.”
It’s not just the customers, though. Lovett’s team are team Lovett, too.
“When you work for Adam, you don’t actually work for him,” says Helen Cruz, who has been manager at aMano since the restaurant opened nearly 20 years ago. “He works with you. He’s welcoming, like, ‘I’m here to help you and guide you.’ I haven’t met any other human being that would give you three or four opportunities even if you messed it up once. There’s a great human being side of him that has made him successful.”
Liz Werkmeister joined Lovett’s team in 2015 and grew into a full-time director role for his ventures, handling catering, menus and graphic design and wearing several other hats.
“When I went on full-time with Adam, he would call me on a random Tuesday or Sunday and say, ‘Where’s your head at? How are you?’ and my knee-jerk reaction was like, ‘What’s wrong?’” laughs Werkmeister. “He genuinely cares about what you need.”
Lovett is hands on, doing the heavy lifting during catering — a part of his business that he hopes to continue scaling — and stepping up to help when it’s needed on the restaurant floor.
As for the future, he wants to refine his businesses with a formal restaurant group of his own but plans to keep accepting signs from the universe, an approach he’s taken through most of his ventures.
“I feel like we’ve gotten to a point where I have a lot of superstars in my restaurants and on my team,” he muses, “and I think we’re definitely going in the right direction.”
