In the late ’90s, a few years after he opened the now-iconic The Turtle Club on Naples’ Vanderbilt Beach, Peter Tierney met with the team behind a prolific restaurant empire for advice on franchising. He quickly realized a distant, corporate approach wasn’t for him. “I came back to Naples and focused on what we were doing, the community. I think a lot of my success has been because I stayed,” he says.
A culinary graduate of Johnson & Wales University, Peter moved to Marco Island in the 1980s. He landed a job at the cavernous institution O’Shea’s Restaurant before taking an executive chef gig at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. There, he stepped out of the kitchen and worked his way up the front-of-house ranks, ultimately becoming the resort’s general manager. After 10 years, the hotel changed ownership and Peter approached Mike Moore, whose family owned The Vanderbilt Beach Resort, with a proposal to turn the run-down shuffleboard court into a breakfast room. “I lied a bit [about the plan],” Peter says with a laugh. “That was the birth of The Turtle Club.” The vision to turn underperforming spaces into some of the region’s standout restaurants has served Peter well over the past three decades. In Naples’ volatile market, where rising costs, seasonal lulls and storms frequently shutter eateries, he’s achieved real staying power.
Following the success of The Turtle Club, he and partner Dr. Bud Negley bought and expanded The Bay House in North Naples. (They sold the restaurant in 2021.) The Claw Bar opened in 2018 at the Bellasera Hotel downtown, which they acquired shortly after. Peter then transformed the second-floor ballroom into perpetually packed The London Club, a sultry jazz haunt. A second venue, The London Club Lounge, opens this fall with its own live entertainment and an elevated cocktail program. Rounding out the portfolio is The Syren Oyster Bar, a nautical-chic reimagining of the Wharf Tavern Restaurant and Lobster House on Tenth Street South, which debuted as one of the city’s best new restaurants in 2024.
Each project has its own personality, united by common threads: elevated design, gracious hospitality and a menu that breaks with the ubiquitous Caesar salad, grouper and scallops. “I think of restaurants like an escape. You want to feel special,” Peter says. “I want to look you in the eye and serve you. As everything goes AI, our industry will be one of the last bastions of human interaction.”
His commitment to fostering a sense of community and personal connection was reciprocated in 2022 when Hurricane Ian washed away The Turtle Club. Peter and his team received thousands of messages of support as they shifted sand and rebuilt. When the restaurant announced its reopening nearly twoyears later, 65,000 people entered a contest to secure the first reservation. Even now, prime dinner slots in season book out six-plus months in advance. “It was never in anyone’s mind not to rebuild,” Peter says. “Everybody knows that place. We made something special.” —Samantha Garbarini