Yup, Blue Parrot in EH will Open

New Owners Jon Bon Jovi and Ron Perelman

By Dan Rattiner

Posted 02/06/09

The Blue Parrot, a popular Tex-Mex indoor-outdoor summer hangout, located behind the stores on Main Street in East Hampton for 20 years, is going to reopen again this spring. It closed two years ago, after Lee Beiler, a surfer who founded the place, announced he was putting it up for sale so he could move to Hawaii, which he then did.

It's taken a while for it to get sold. An option to buy the restaurant was taken by Ralph Lauren that first winter. He owned, and still owns, the highly successful Polo store next door and in front of the Blue Parrot. Lauren was planning to reopen the restaurant, not in its most recent guise, but as a chic twin to the little restaurants he currently has in Palm Beach and Beverly Hills.

Wags started talking badly about that when it was announced, mourning in advance the demise of Big Blue. Lauren plowed ahead. But it did not open that summer. In the fall, writer James Brady, a regular, wrote a eulogy for the Blue Parrot in Forbes magazine. And then, in the early winter, it was announced that it was once again back on the market.

Plans then moved ahead last fall to reopen the Blue Parrot as it once was. The new owners, the New York Post reports, are rock star Jon Bon Jovi and billionaire Ron Perelman, both of whom have houses out here.

Big Blue was not exactly Elaine's or Harry's Bar, but it was frequented by Matt Lauer, Mike Lupica, Cheryl Tiegs, the late Peter Mass and Joe Heller, Renee Zellweger, Bill Murray, Martha Stewart, Sarah Jessica Parker, Billy Joel and the late George Plimpton. Christie Brinkely autographed the bar.

See you there.