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Location
We are near Peppercorn Deli in Speonk at the traffic light, Jack & Diane's Restaurant, The Firm Fitness, and next stores to us in the Village Square plaza are Dance Studio, Micheangelo Pizza, and Bagel Shop.
About Us
Speonk’s Pearl Proves Dreams Do Come True By Caroline Simson from The Southhampton Press
From left, Pearl owner and chef Ling Lin with Japanese chef Donny Usman and Hibachi chef John Zheng and some of the dishes available at the restaurant.
Ling Lin, a chef and Eastport resident, had dreamed of opening his own Chinese sit-down restaurant.
Those dreams became reality on September 2, when Mr. Lin and his family opened Pearl in Speonk, a Japanese and Chinese restaurant featuring a hibachi grill—where people can sit and watch their food being prepared in front of them—and sushi bar. And the best part about having their own restaurant, said Becky Lin, Pearl’s manager and Mr. Lin’s daughter, is the chance for her father to experiment with new dishes and show off his talent.
“My family loves cooking and food,” Ms. Lin said. “My father and the other chefs like to try different things. This restaurant is all about creating new dishes for our customers.” One of those creations, she said, is the Long Island roll, a house specialty of crabmeat, avocado, mango, shrimp tempura and eel, priced at $12. Putting such tropical ingredients into the sushi, she said, helps to differentiate Pearl from the other sushi restaurants in town. Pearl’s sushi chefs, all of whom are from restaurants in Manhattan, enjoy inventing for their customers, she said. “People are in tune with the different flavors.”
One of her father’s creations, she said—and by far the restaurant’s most popular starter—is the crispy cheese wonton with crabmeat, $4 for take-out, priced slightly higher for the sit-down restaurant. Mr. Lin learned to make the sauce for the dish, his daughter said, while he was working at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. She said the dish combines Chinese and Italian styles. Although the Lins also own a take-out Chinese restaurant, Pearl is their first sit-down venture.
Options on Pearl’s take-out menu range from a side order of white rice for $1 to a party platter of 15 pieces of sashimi, four pieces of sushi and two rolls for $32. Ms. Lin said her father has been a chef for more than 10 years. Originally from China, he immigrated to the United States in the late 1980s, worked in both a Chinese and an Italian restaurant in Chinatown and Manhattan, and then moved his family to Eastport in 1998.
Ms. Lin said that her father and her mother, Yan Zheng, are passionate about cooking and food, as is she. “They have stuck with the business even though it can be tough,” she said. Ms. Lin said Pearl is fun, upbeat and family-friendly. “People are positive in here, and the employees like being here,” she said. “People have said that it’s very local, and a familiar place. It feels like home. We may be small, but we have everything.”
Striving to maintain a fun atmosphere is part of the reason that her family decided to install the hibachi grill. They thought it would help to make the restaurant more interesting, she said. Interesting items abound on the menu, such as another of her father’s creations, Pearl’s Grilled Beef. Priced at $16.95 for take-out, the dish features grilled beef baby ribs in a mild barbecue sauce, served with caramelized onions. This dish was created using ingredients from a famous Korean recipe for beef but personalized with some of Mr. Lin’s own ingredients.
Without a doubt, however, one of the most popular items at Pearl’s is General Tso’s Chicken, a white meat chicken dish with the chef’s spicy kung pao sauce and broccoli, priced at $10.25 for take-out. That contrast, Ms. Lin said, helps to differentiate Pearl from other Asian restaurants in the Hamptons. “We blend a little bit of the old, traditional items and the new ones,” she said.
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