Pop Star Taylor Dayne’s Newest Hit? A Restaurant, a Best Friend and a Second Act
“You realize as you get older that girlfriends are everything in life,” said Celeste Fierro, restaurateur, former STK owner and co-founder of Saylor Beach House in Greenport, Long Island. Fierro and her good friend, pop star Taylor Dayne, opened the Mediterranean restaurant at the start of the summer tourist season in 2026.
As she said it, Fierro touched my elbow affectionately and squeezed my hand. We met for the first time minutes earlier, while my best friend Dori and I were enjoying dinner at Saylor Beach House on a perfect late-summer Saturday night on Long Island’s North Fork.
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For the foodies: The skirt steak was medium-rare and melted like butter. The whole roasted branzino, sourced from Florida, was moist and exquisite. But the sleeper-hit of the dinner was lemon potatoes. They arrived on a small plate and had a yellow hue. I had a feeling I would love them or hate them. I wasn’t expecting something so flavorful and Mediterranean-esque. I loved them. My friend loved them. My teen son absolutely loved what was left of them and the skirt steak later that night. He asked me to take him to Saylor Beach House next summer.
But even more compelling than the food is how Saylor Beach House came to be.
Hospitality Background
Celeste Fierro became a premiere event planner in New York City in 1997 when she founded Cititaste Events. In 2004, along with co-owner Jonathan Segal, she founded the restaurant ONE in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. That led to the creation of The ONE Group, a global hospitality company, and the renowned STK steakhouses with more than 30 locations worldwide, including many major US cities.
“STK was my baby,” Fierro said. “My passion was marketing and events, and I loved running the company. But you get tired. I was on a plane more than I was home. You want to spend time with your family.”
A very short retirement followed.
Intersecting Interests
Roughly 30 years ago, Fierro reconnected with Taylor Dayne, the Grammy-nominated artist best known for the danceable hit “Tell It To My Heart.”
“We both grew up on Long Island. She just happened to go into the music and entertainment world and I went into the food and hospitality world. We would always cross paths. We both [split time between] Los Angeles and New York. When it comes to music and hospitality and entertainment, we have a lot of similar friends and similar interests,” Fierro said.
The two had traveled in similar circles for years, but that night at one of Fierro’s Los Angeles restaurants, they started to become more than just acquaintances; they became best friends. During their 30-year friendship, they had talked about launching a restaurant together, but they were both too busy to make it happen.
Opportunities Align
When the opportunity arose to launch a joint-venture restaurant, Dayne and Fierro’s passions aligned.
“I love entertaining. She loves making sure the playlist is right. I’m about the food and the seating and making sure everyone’s busy. She’s about the fun and the vibe and making sure the music’s right,” Fierro said. “We’ve always talked about doing something like this over the years. This happened to come into our lap.”
The owners of Greenport’s historic Claudio’s, which has a 150-year history and served as a speakeasy in the prohibition era, asked Fierro to help them with an expansion. The waterfront bar and restaurant, located directly across from Claudio’s Waterfront, takes its name from a blend of Celeste and Taylor — Saylor — while also nodding to the East End’s maritime heritage.
While Fierro embraced the restaurant as a post-retirement endeavor, for Dayne it represented a step into entrepreneurship. Dayne serves as the venue’s music director and performed Tina Turner’s Proud Mary for guests during the soft opening weekend on May 17, 2026.
“What artist do you know who hasn’t branched out entrepreneurially?” Dayne told Spotlight Hamptons. “In all my years in the music business, watching things in the ’80s and ’90s, being aligned with a brand was a no-no. Now, especially with hip-hop and R&B culture, our brand is who we are.”
Noting that her business partner was already an established restaurateur, Dayne shared, “It’s about food, luxury, the people I want to be in business with, friendship and creating a place where we want to be, with the people we want to hang with.”
Echoing Dayne’s sentiments, Fierro told me, “When you’re doing something with your family and friends and you’re enjoying it, it isn’t work. It’s fun. At this point in my career, I don’t have to work. I’ve been very fortunate. But I love what I do and I’m having fun. If you can have fun with your girlfriends doing something fun, why not do it?”
Love Will Lead You Back
As Dori and I shared a chocolate peanut butter mousse for dessert and I sipped my second Aperol, I thought back to a waterfront dinner on Fire Island years ago. Her daughter and my daughter and son – three under 5 for those who are curious — ate buttered pasta and chicken fingers while we hoped for enough time to finish our entrees and a singular glass of wine. Now, I was bringing home skirt steak and Mediterranean potatoes for a teenage son who then requested for the whole experience.
Like Fierro and Dayne who drifted apart at the height of their careers, our lives got busy amidst raising kids. Dori and I remained friends, but not “call everyday” or even “text weekly” friends. Now we were soaking up the sun, the music, and the vibes at a Greenport hot spot and making plans to come back with our teens and their significant others.
That’s when the significance of what Fierro said about our girlfriends truly hit me. The familiar chorus of a 1990 Taylor Dayne song popped into my head: “Love will lead you back.”
Over shrimp cocktail and Aperols, Dori and I discovered what Fierro and Dayne knew the moment they launched Saylor Beach House: Love has a way of leading longtime friends back to the same table.
