The name of the new Westhampton Beach restaurant inside the old Post Stop Café space is called Donohue’s East. As the name attests, it is indeed east of the original Donohue’s. Eighty miles east.
Both are owned by Maureen Donohue-Peters. She is the grand-daughter of Martin Donohue, who in 1950 opened a modest steakhouse on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. It took 75 years for the Donohue family to open a sequel.
“Everyone told me I was crazy,” said Donohue-Peters, who lives in Hampton Bays. “But this was the best thing I could do.”
Old Familiar
Expansion is always a tricky business for a historical restaurant, because patrons don’t just go there for the food or service. They are drawn by a particular atmosphere that has been steadily accrued over many years. Capturing the original character of the old place at a new address is nearly impossible.
But any Donohue’s regular who walks into 144 Main Street in Westhampton Beach will instantly recognize the vibe. The bar — the first thing you see — is small and made of dark wood, just as it is in New York. The dining room is also small, able to accommodate only 49 people. (Donohue’s Steakhouse can fit around 55 diners. Donohue-Peters likes tight, manageable joints, and any further restaurants she might open will also be modest in size.)
While Donohue-Peters was careful to keep the many traditional Donohue’s dishes and touches from the original Manhattan spot intact, welcome new aspects include the popular front porch. (Photos by Madison Fender)
The tables have the same white-and-green paper placemats that are found in Manhattan, and the daily specials are written on a small chalkboard in both locations. The famous booths at Donohue’s Steak House — which have been replaced six or seven times over the years owing to wear and tear — could not be replicated in Westhampton Beach because the room’s low windows could not accommodate them.
The food, too, is the same. Donohue-Peters made sure of that.
“I’ve got my meatloaf,” she says. “I’ve got my shepherd’s pie. I’ve got my turkey dinner. I’ve got my burgers.”
To achieve that consistency, she closed down Donohue’s for three weeks last summer and had two of her guys come to Westhampton Beach to teach cooks there how to make the old-world, meat-and-potatoes dishes first created by her father.
She made a few concessions to the clientele of the Hamptons. There are more salads, and she takes advantage of the maritime locale with a daily seafood special, such as flounder or scallops.
Those dishes are sometimes prepared by Donohue-Peters herself, or her niece and partner, Mary Barrie.
“There’s no such thing that you don’t do it,” she says. Her father made her go to the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan, and Maureen made Mary do the same.
Where It Began
If a screenplay opened with the direction “New York restaurant, circa 1950s,” Donohue’s original locale would serve nicely.
The first Donohue’s is a sliver of a restaurant on a block of Lexington Avenue between 64th and 65th Streets. It was founded in 1950 by Martin Donohue and passed down to his son, Michael, who began working there as a teenager, and then to Michael’s daughter, Maureen.
Walk under the old green awning into the railway-car-sized space and a dark mahogany bar is immediately to your right, some coat hooks to the left. Under your feet is black and white linoleum. The art deco-ish back bar — built by Maureen’s father and grandfather — is as it was when the place opened. Above the cash register, etched in frosted glass, is the silhouette of an elephant, its tail facing the door for good luck. (“At a lot of the bars in the ‘50s you’d see it,” explains Donohue-Peters.)
In the back are two rows of black vinyl booths, and a line of small tables in-between. Each table is covered with a red tablecloth, on each tablecloth paper placemats tell you in green heraldic lettering that Donohue’s is open every day for lunch, dinner and supper. A blackboard on the wall at the back advertises such bygone mid-20th-century classics as Yankee Pot Roast and Maryland Turkey and, of course, steak. Both locations — the old and the new — are serviced by the same meat purveyor.
For decades, Donohue’s soldiered on as a local watering hole and chop house favored by locals and a smattering of in-the-know New Yorkers. During the last decade or so, however, as mid-century New York dining institutions steadily vanished, it’s become more widely beloved.
This is owing to dozens of write-ups in the papers; the patronage of the famous and infamous (Gay Talese, Bernie Madoff); and its role as a backdrop for the shows Billions and Law & Order (which broke the bartop when some hotshot decided to jump over it).
It has also made regular headlines with periodic reports that Donohue-Peters planned to close, stories that sent regulars into a panic. The latest of these came last June; Donohue-Peters’ lease is up in December 2026.
The place is particularly attractive to fellow hospitality professionals who recognize the value of the fading restaurant model that Donohue’s embodies.
Open for both lunch and dinner, Donohue’s East is the Hamptons’ new old-school-style spot offering classic steakhouse fare. (Photos by Madison Fender)
“I love that it titles itself as a steak house but it is clearly not,” says chef Alex Stupek of Empellón, a longtime devotee — to his point, Donohue’s surely counts as the smallest restaurant in New York to bear the grand name of ‘steak house’. “I also love that I am able to experience it at the bar in a completely different way than I do at the table. I love the way they serve martinis. I love that a phone actually rings and someone picks it up. I love that it’s been open for so long. I think outsiders understand the profundity of this but unless you are in the business you can’t be fully aware of what it means.”
It’s also been influential in other, less nostalgic ways. “It is some of the best people watching in the city, some of the best bartenders you’ll ever meet, who have that classic New York sass,” says bartender Sarah Morrissey, who modeled the house martini at nearby Le Veau d’Or on the one at Dohohue’s. “It makes me happy to be a bartender—not a mixologist or cocktail maker—and a New Yorker.”
Next Stop, Westhampton Beach
The opportunity to open a second Donohue’s came through a regular.
“One of my customers was looking to buy real estate out east, and they were looking in Westhampton,” says Donohue-Peters. “They had a couple places they were looking at and they said, ‘Would you consider opening a place in Westhampton?’” She scoffed at the suggestion, because she was getting close to retirement. Still, she agreed to look at a property that had until recently housed the Post Stop Café, which got its name because the 1904 building had once been a post office.
She liked what she saw.
“I said, it’s something I’d be interested in. He said, ‘She’s not ready to sell yet,’” Maureen recalls. So they waited. Four years later, Sandy Patterson, the owner of Post Stop Café, said she was finally ready to sell.
Serving similar food to what the original location is renowned for, Donohue-Peters says of her new Westhampton outpost, “I’ve got my meatloaf. I’ve got my shepherd’s pie. I’ve got my turkey dinner. I’ve got my burgers.” (Photos by Madison Fender)
When Donohue-Peters got the keys, she tweaked the interior here and there to make it feel more like the Donohue’s to the west, staining the blonde-wood bar a dark brown, and replacing the bentwood chairs with sturdier seating. One notable difference to the Manhattan original is the front porch. But diners — roughly 30% of whom are regulars on Lexington Avenue — have quickly adapted.
“It is the most popular spot to sit,” said Donohue-Peters. “Because you can people watch on Main Street.”
These days, Donohue-Peters spends more time at Donohue’s East than Donohue’s. She enjoys some familiar company there. Six other family members work at Westhampton, including Mary Barrie’s father, mother, her other aunt, a cousin and a sister.
It all contributes to the traditional hospitality model that Donohue-Peters stubbornly adheres to.
“You want to have that home feel,” she says. “You want to have old school. There’s no more old school, no matter where you go.”
Now, there is at least one more old-school place that people can go to.
Robert Simonson is the co-founder of the award-winning Substack newsletter “The Mix” and James Beard-nominated author of eight books about cocktails. He was the cocktail columnist for The New York Times from 2009 to 2024, and currently writes for The Wall Street Journal. He lives in Brooklyn and dines at Donohue’s Steak House often.
