When a friend recently learned that I was planning a trip to City Island, which is connected to the Pelham Bay portion of the Bronx by a short bridge, he asked, “Are you going to Tony’s or Johnny’s?” At the southern tip of City Island Avenue — the main road, which runs the length of the narrow landmass about a mile and a half — you’ll find two mid-century seafood restaurants, Johnny’s Reef and Tony’s Pier. With apologies to loyalists of both (Mike Bloomberg is a well-known Johnny’s man), they’re nearly identical: both counter service, with a charming retro ordering system similar to Katz’s Deli, with different stations (raw, steamed, roasted, fried, frozen tiki drinks), and both with ample seating at the outdoor picnic table – watch out for hungry seagulls.
With Seafood Kingz 2, Darryl Lily, one of the co-owners and a Bronx resident, fulfills an old dream of opening a restaurant on City Island.
Johnny’s and Tony’s are definitely worth a visit, but a lot has changed on City Island. I had another destination in mind: Seafood Kingz 2, which opened in February. As the name implies, it is a secondary location; the first is in St. Albans, Queens, and was opened in Fall 2019 by the Lily family, whose patriarch, Darryl, is an experienced chef of acute care kitchens and a Bronx native. If a landlocked part of Queens seems like an unlikely location for a seafood restaurant, the family would agree, Darryl’s son Derell recently told me. But they took a gamble on an abandoned pizzeria and paid off during the first year of the pandemic, thanks to a huge demand for takeout. (It’s a point of pride for the family that their food travels well and reheats nicely the next day.)
The Seafood Kingz 2 team consists of Darryl Lelie (bottom left), his son Derell (back right) and his brother Max (front right).
The success of Seafood Kingz in Queens was enough to fulfill an old dream of Darryl: opening a restaurant on City Island. Until the late 1960s, there were no black homeowners on the island. As a teenager in the 1980s, Darryl, who is black, was sometimes driven away by white residents when he tried to ride his bicycle across the bridge. With a population of just over 4,000, the island is still predominantly white and has an ugly history of racism. Still, Darryl and his wife, Catrina, have always enjoyed it; Derell recalls childhood trips to JP’s, a restaurant on the north side of the island, for shrimp and rice and virgin daiquiris. In 2015, a deal to take over a vacant restaurant had fallen apart, but in 2020 the space re-opened and the Lilies were given a second chance.
Blink and you might miss Seafood Kingz 2. It’s one of the first storefronts on the City Island side of the bridge, across the water; the restaurants that are right on the water are more noticeable. However, remarkable things happen inside. The island is home to a handful of black businesses, but the Lilies are pretty sure their is the first black soul food seafood restaurant there. Derell and his sister, Brittney, work as general manager, and in the kitchen Darryl’s brother, Max, and youngest son, Dalvin – with the occasional help from Catrina – make an art of breading and frying shrimp, tightly coiled and crispy. , plus thin fillets of whiting and meatier pieces of catfish. They steam lobster tails and king and snow crab legs with corn, potatoes and broccoli before showering them in Old Bay.
What really sets the restaurant apart on the island is what Derell calls “the soulful bells and whistles.” I was encouraged to find tostones at both Johnny’s and Tony’s, and the offerings at other establishments on the island reflect its growing diversity, but Seafood Kingz 2 is the only one that serves dense, inexpensive macaroni pie, topped with a gorgeous cap of toasted orange cheddar; shiny candied yams, sprinkled with cinnamon; sour, earthy kale that has darkened from slow cooking; and Catrina’s potato salad, heavy on bread and butter pickles and intoxicating with nutmeg. On a clear night, sit in front of the large front windows as the sun sets over Eastchester Bay and there’s nothing to block your view. (Dished $12-$110.)
