Editorial: Bring back Claudio’s

Amalfi at Claudio’s flamed out quicker than a Roman candle on the Fourth of July.

In just one week, it went from a splashy new waterfront concept to the latest punch line in Claudio’s long-running identity crisis.

Beneath the ridicule was a frustration that has been building for years.

For generations, the restaurant Claudio family members turned into a Greenport institution was more than a valuable piece of waterfront real estate. Baymen stopped in after a day on the water. Farmers came in from the fields. Families celebrated birthdays and anniversaries. Village workers, business owners, boaters and tourists shared the same bar.

You did not need a reservation or a Birkin bag to snag a seat. You did not have to take out a second mortgage for a good meal.

That changed after the Claudios sold the property in 2018.

The current owners have cycled through operators, restaurant names and concepts. Each new incarnation has carried Claudio’s farther from the people and traditions that made it valuable in the first place.

Today, too much of Greenport is built for visitors spending vacation money. A basic night out at Claudio’s recently meant $26 calamari, $31 fish and chips, a $46 lobster roll or a salad approaching $50.

There is something particularly offensive about selling the North Fork’s working-waterfront image while pricing out the people who sustain it.

The baymen who catch the seafood and the farmers who grow the produce should not feel like strangers in restaurants that use their labor and way of life to sell an “authentic” North Fork experience.

We are often told that new money and luxury development can coexist with the agrarian character that has long distinguished the North Fork from the moneyed Hamptons.

But for the people who live here year-round, the benefits are difficult to see.

Familiar businesses disappear. Restaurant prices rise. Housing becomes unattainable. Waterfront properties are treated as investment vehicles. Homes sit dark for most of the year, owned by people who contribute to the tax base but appear for only a few summer weekends. A tax payment is not the same thing as participation in a community.

New money has not necessarily made Greenport better. In too many ways, it has robbed the village of its soul.

Claudio’s reflects that larger loss. What was once a gathering place has become another waterfront property searching for the right upscale formula.

The solution may lie in the refrain uttered by scores of North Fork residents after the latest failed venture: Bring back Claudio’s.