Manna at Lobster Inn: Drew Hiatt Finally Runs His Own Show

Drew Hiatt, the former executive chef of Topping Rose House, will be performing his culinary magic in the Hamptons again this summer as the new owner and operator of waterfront dining spot Manna at Lobster Inn.

Even if you haven’t eaten at one of the classic eatery’s past iterations (The Lobster Inn building is over 70 years old), you’ve probably already been introduced to Manna and the iconic “Lobster Grille Inn” sign that welcomes traffic-weary drivers to the Hamptons on the west-bound mouth of the Sunrise Highway. 

Hiatt came into the picture after the property owner at 5 Inlet Road and its last restaurant operator parted ways, leaving the recently-renovated restaurant space without a rudder.

After a false start of his own this summer, Hiatt was hooked up with property co-owner Donna Lanzetta through an intermediary, and signed on quickly for the chance to finally own and operate a restaurant on his terms after years of working behind the scenes at top East End restaurants.

He and Lanzetta, he said, “kind of clicked and arranged a deal.”

Hiatt has been waiting for the chance to run his own show. 

“[In the past,] I’ve been making a lot of people money, but the goal has always been, “How do you get to be your own boss?’ And this is that, this is the start of that, this is the first place but not the last place,” Hiatt said. 

The Boston-born chef’s vision for the new Manna at Lobster Inn falls somewhere between the traditional New England-style fish shacks of his youth and the more polished, fashionable dining experiences east of the Shinnecock canal.

While you can expect the kind of seafood-forward, lobster-centric restaurant that’s gone missing in the Hamptons, don’t expect it to be a fish-fry house, either. Hiatt said to expect “thoughtful, elevated” dishes with a medium to high price range, a lounge area to enjoy cocktails, music and lawn games, and a dining room with stunning views of Shinnecock Inlet. 

Speaking of the dining room, it will be centered around a 600-gallon live lobster tank – one of the biggest of its kind in the area – which Hiatt said he’s going to fill with live Maine lobsters and local clams.

There will be a major emphasis on native fish and oysters and he intends to cook what’s caught in the adjacent Shinnecock waters by local fishermen who are increasingly cutting out the middleman in the sea-to-table pipeline.

While Hiatt intends to take his time building up the menu at Manna, he will eventually also be serving luxe raw bar items like caviar and king crab legs, too. There will be recurring non-seafood specials, as well, like a $300, 54-ounce Florentine steak for two that requires 40 minutes to cook, and a number of creative small plates, or what he calls American-style tapas. 

“We’re gonna be sourcing from as local as possible. While there’s fishing here and while I can buy it here, I’m looking out the window for my seafood. I need scallops, my fisherman has scallop beds, tuna from Montauk, striped bass, oyster beds … in three hours I can get 300 oysters delivered to my door … When I buy fish, I specifically request local fish. Maybe it costs me more, and I have to charge more, or maybe it costs me less because I’m cutting out the middle man.”

This debut season, Hiatt indicated, will definitely be a testing ground and “investment year.”

“We’re very seasonal of course, every year the seasonality does extend itself into the shoulder seasons, and the off-season … but it’s hard to survive, you know, honestly we’re probably not going to make any money this year, our goal is to survive, make it to the next year, pay our bills, pay our employees, and then next year maybe we will make some money … this is a long-term investment.”

While the ambitious Hiatt plans to make Manna the foundation of his East End restaurant group, he says the 5-acre property where Manna sits is a hidden gem that Lanzetta saved from being turned into condominiums. He said Lanzetta intends to develop a fish hatchery and aqua-cultural farm on the sprawling site.

With space zoned for farmland, too, he hopes to eventually grow his own produce on-site the way he did at Topping Rose House, where he and his wife grew $50,000 worth of produce one summer.  

“We’re in the Hamptons, and I like to say Manna is the first place in and the last place out. There’s no restaurant that has this out there, it’s not a super complicated thing, we’re going to go from the live tank to the steamer to the plate and you can’t really get fresher than that.”

Manna at Lobster Inn is located at 5 Inlet Road, Southampton. For more information, go to mannarestaurant.com