New clam bar surfaces along Patchogue River

Bayman’s Clam Bar has opened at 116 Division Street in Patchogue, on the Patchogue River waterfront that was home to Harbor Crab Co. for roughly 25 years.

Co-owners Jay Varney and Will Strano built the restaurant around traditional South Shore seafood. The menu leans on local shellfish, including whole fried clams, baked clams, and clams on the half shell from the Great South Bay, alongside oysters, fried flounder, lobster rolls and cold beer. Bayman’s is open daily from 11 a.m. to midnight, with the kitchen serving from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.

The building opened in 2001 as Harbor Crab Co., a seafood-and-drinks destination on the river that operated for years under owner Mark Miller. Varney and Strano took over the space earlier this year and reworked the main dining room toward a classic clam-bar look, while keeping the outdoor tiki bar that longtime customers know.

The owners have said they want Bayman’s to reflect Long Island’s fishing heritage and the character of the bay just beyond the deck, keeping the focus on local seafood and an unhurried waterfront setting rather than a wholesale overhaul of a familiar address. The name itself nods to the Great South Bay’s baymen, the fishermen who have long worked these waters.

Bayman’s rounds out its raw bar and fried-seafood core with the sort of casual river-deck dining the site has drawn for two decades, now under a name built around the bay’s catch.