The restaurant building at 62 Montauk Highway in Westhampton, home to Buoy One for the better part of a decade and to The Ketch after that, is being remade as a sports bar called Big Al's Clubhouse, and the paperwork that makes a bar a bar has now been filed. Big Al's Clubhouse LLC submitted an application for an on-premises restaurant liquor license to the New York State Liquor Authority on August 26, the company's second filing on the address this summer.

Two filings in a month says they are serious

The new application, received by the Liquor Authority on the morning of August 26, seeks a full restaurant license for the Westhampton premises and has completed intake, which is the start of the review process rather than the end of it. It follows an earlier application the same company filed on July 29 under the state's food and beverage license category, which remains under review. A restaurant-class license is the one that puts a full bar behind the taps, and it is also a signal about the menu: the state ties that license to a working kitchen, so Big Al's is planning to feed people, not just pour for them.

A clubhouse built by friends, according to the friends

The bar's own public page describes the concept plainly: a sports bar where fans, friends and families watch every game together, built around food, drinks and game-day energy. A construction post from early April shows the interior coming together, with the owners framing the project as a group of friends putting up a clubhouse of their own. Would-be regulars have been asking for an opening date in the comments for months. None has been announced, and the license timeline suggests the answer runs through the Liquor Authority.

The corner it is taking over has fed Westhampton for years

The address matters more than the name for anyone who drives Montauk Highway. Buoy One brought its Riverhead seafood operation to 62 Montauk Highway at the start of the 2010s and made the corner a reliable stop for lobster rolls and fried flounder for years. After Buoy One's Westhampton run ended, The Ketch took the building, serving a casual menu of steaks, burgers, wings and seafood, and was active as recently as this spring, hosting a fundraiser for the Westhampton Beach St. Patrick's Day parade in March. The Ketch's own page now lists the restaurant as permanently closed. The turnover, in other words, is fresh, and the building is not sitting empty for long.

The stretch of highway it sits on is one of the more recognizable in the hamlet, across from the sword-fighting statues that have marked Casa Basso for generations of beach traffic. A sports bar is a different bet than seafood on that corner, and arguably a smarter one for the ten months of the year when the beach crowd thins and the year-round Westhampton, Eastport and Speonk crowd wants somewhere to watch the Jets lose in company.

What happens next

A pending application is not a license, and the Liquor Authority's review can run weeks to months. But a company that files twice in a month is a company with a construction schedule, and the filings put a name, an address and an intent on the public record before any sign goes up on the highway. Football season starts in two weeks. Whether Big Al's makes kickoff is the Liquor Authority's call as much as Big Al's, but Westhampton is getting its clubhouse either way, and the corner that has been feeding the hamlet since the Buoy One days is going to keep doing it.