Amiee McElroy is pictured in her new restaurant, Catbird, in the former Sunset Landing location in Asbury Park.
By WILLIAM CLARK
If you are walking along Sunset Avenue in Asbury Park near the Deal Lake bridge you might catch a whiff of burning wood. But it’s not from a backyard fire pit or chimney.
It’s the newly-installed wood burning pizza oven Amiee McElroy and her crew use to create one-of-a-kind pizzas at her new restaurant, Catbird.
McElroy, formerly the owner of Medusa on Main Street recently launched a soft opening of her new venture. Catbird, where Sunset Landing was formerly located. The new eatery features a limited menu for the first few weeks. The staff produced 95 pizzas in just four hours on one of the opening nights.
Catbird is open from 4 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.
McElroy is hands on in the most literal of ways. With just 15 minutes before service began Thurs., May 9, she was outside with staffer Jay Smith taking a mechanical saw to the metal handle of a pizza peel, using a wrench and leverage between her and Smith to unplug the end and reconfigure the tool for best use within the space.
Sunset Landing, one of the oldest operating businesses in the city, closed in 2023.
“I am very fortunate to take over the space,” McElroy said.
With 10 minutes until the first guests were expected to arrive, McElroy was inside, beating a path between the kitchen, dining room and storage ensuring that each part of the operation was ready to perform.
The fruition of months of planning, labor and dedication is in part due to the help that McElroy received.
“I had very good friends come back to help me open,” she said.
These friends pitched in to help get CatBird up and running. McElroy believes that this helps foster the sense of communal spirit that continues through its opening.
The restaurant itself is also a far cry from the former space the Medusa occupied in an old auto mechanics garage on Main Street
“This is a cabin on a lake,” she said of CatBird.
The idyllic feel is present throughout with tables on the deck, the fireplace along the wall in the dining room, and the herb garden outside. It would be no surprise for people to mistake the business for a simple home along Deal Lake.
The new environment is also apt for the name. As their website states, the CatBird “makes its home in the hedges and shrubs around town and once you spot one you will see them everywhere.”
As McElroy noted, “There’s so much history and so many memories.”
She hopes to keep the legacy of the space, knowing how vital the restaurant was to people in the area.
Smith and Guillermo Santiago are both at the restaurant from the Medusa era. McElroy touts both of their efforts then and now. She values their sweat equity saying both men have had a part in each step over the last two years.
“I’m stoked to have friends with me,” she said.
