Danny Murphy outside his Bridge Avenue restaurant, Danny’s Steakhouse, in 2010. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Danny Murphy, a longtime Red Bank restaurateur and champion of the town’s small businesses, died Thursday, according to a Facebook by his daughter. He was 80 years old.
From the moment it opened in Red Bank in 1969, what’s now known as Danny’s Steakhouse was the alter ego of its energetic and ever-adapting creator.
Murphy, center, discussing parking with Mayor Pasquale Menna in 2011, and below, behind the bar of his restaurant after its sale in March, 2022. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge.)
A borough native who’d been in business longer than many of his competitors had been alive, Murphy advocated fiercely for his industry and other borough businesses, serving on Red Bank RiverCenter’s board and other committees.
Over the last two decades, he pushed repeatedly for parking solutions. And early in the 2020 COVID 19 pandemic, he pressed the town to ease restrictions to allow curbside dining, which remains a feature of the town’s dining scene.
Murphy got his start in the food biz helping his mother, the late Mary (nee Zino) Murphy, make pizzas in the kitchen at Brothers Restaurant on West Front Street. After college and a brief stint as a court reporter, Murphy bought what had been Lou’s Pizzeria, renaming it Danny’s Pizza Hut and, later, Danny’s Italian Restaurant.
With some interruptions during two marriages and divorces, an apartment above the eatery served as his home. In that time, the building, formerly abutted by a lumberyard and antiques emporium, came to be surrounded on three sides by the West Side Lofts and Triumph Brewing Company as Murphy refused developers’ offers.
Murphy sold the business in early 2022 and moved to the Grandville Towers high-rise just a block away.
“I can’t just carry a case of beer around the way I used to,” he said at the time.
The buyer, Kyle O’Brien, kept Murphy on as a consultant. “That guy can operate the room,” O’Brien said.
Mayor Billy Portman announced Murphy’s death at Thursday night’s meeting of the borough council.
“Danny was a great guy,” Portman said. “Just warm and supportive.” He called Murphy’s passing “a loss for the borough,” before asking for a moment of silence in his honor.
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