Cyril Fitzsimons: Longtime bar owner, South Fork bon vivant

In Ireland, there's a phrase for a rollicking good time: a great craic. Cyril Fitzsimons, a Dubliner-turned-New Yorker and longtime owner of Cyril’s Fish House, certainly knew how to bring it.

At his iconic bar in Napeague, the craic was so epic it would sometimes spill out onto the shoulder of Montauk Highway. In the midst of it all, at his own table, a white-haired Fitzsimons talked to patrons for hours — that is, until the bar closed in 2016.

Fitzsimons, 77, died April 24 from complications of COVID-19 at the Bronx-Lebanon Medical Center in the Bronx. A few weeks prior, Fitzsimons had a stroke and was recovering in a nearby rehabilitation center when he contracted the virus. By several accounts, Fitzsimons packed a few lifetimes into his nearly eight decades — as a father, as a U.S. Marine who served in the Vietnam War, as the owner of several bars around the world and as a spinner of great stories.

“Cyril was one of a kind,” said John Fairchild, who comanaged Cyril’s Fish House (with Fitzsimons’ son, Richard Fitzsimons) for several years until its closure. “He could scare people because he was so forward, but he had a heart of gold. He would do anything for you.”

Fitzsimons was born July 25, 1942, in Dublin and first came to the United States at 19. Tina Piette, his onetime bar employee and longtime attorney, said Fitzsimons was part of a wave of Irish transplants who opened bars around New York City in the 1980s. “He brought New York City to Amagansett,” said Piette, who began working as a bartender at Cyril’s Fish House soon after it opened in 1990.

Bartenders poured thousands of BBCs, a blend of bananas, rum, Baileys Irish Cream and coconut cream (in the early days, Coco Lopez) that became the enduring house cocktail. In the 1990s, Cyril’s was a mellower place where Fitzsimons looped Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday, Piette recalled. “Those were the times I like to remember, when Cyril was in his essence. He bartended, and served food and then sat with people. He appreciated everybody.”

The cash-only Cyril’s Fish House eventually became wildly busy and Fitzsimons began wintering on the Caribbean island of Anguilla, where he opened several bars and restaurants over the years. Back in Amagansett, Fitzsimons skirmished with the Town of East Hampton over code violations, and decided to close for good in 2016. 

Fitzsimons gave freely to causes such as the Wounded Warrior Project, said Fairchild. “He was a generous man. He would donate money left and right.”

As Fitzsimons himself told the Irish Times in 2012, “You can live hard but you’ve still gotta do the right thing."

In addition to his son, who lives in East Hampton, Fitzsimons is survived by his daughter, Kimani Thomas-Fitzsimons of the Bronx. His surviving siblings are Elizabeth Fitzsimons and brothers Michael and Philip Fitzsimons, all of Ireland.

A private funeral was held Saturday at Yardley & Pino Funeral Home in East Hampton. An informal memorial took place at the former site of the bar (now Morty's Oyster Stand) soon after Fitzsimons died.