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When Wally Lerro and his son, Wally Lerro Jr., opened The Deck at Holly Beach in Wildwood in September, they envisioned a great bar that would serve some food. Then they hired Grier Essick and The Deck at Holly Beach became a bar and restaurant that serves a lot of great food.

"When they opened, they only started off with five sandwiches or so on the menu," Essick explains. "Now, we have a full menu, and people are coming as much for the food as they are the bar … maybe even more."

"I think Chef Grier is serving some of the best food in the Wildwoods right now," Lerro Jr. adds. "I don't think this town has seen food like this in years. He is a great chef and has really made our restaurant what it is. Without him, I'm not so sure we would have done this winter. We all know winters are tough in Wildwood, but we held our own. People really love coming here for the food and the atmosphere."

Lerro isn't kidding about the atmosphere. The Deck at Holly Beach takes up a large corner spot on Pacific and Oak avenues. Encompassing two floors, the downstairs operates year-round, with its large, 44-seat bar featuring six beers on tap and nine high-definition LCD televisions adjacent to a dining room with 44 more seats. Upstairs features an equally large bar, more flat-screen TVs and a deck that will offer live music and a Margaritaville vibe.

"We can't wait for summer," says Lerro Jr. with a laugh. "We're having fun now, but we think we'll be the place to be this summer."

No matter which season you go to The Deck, it's Essick's food that will bring you back. If his name sounds familiar, that's because he served as head chef at the acclaimed Braca Cafe in Sea Isle City, where he worked for 22 years. Now, he's making a name for himself in Wildwood, where he's adding contemporary flair to comfort and bar food.

"We're trying to make good, inexpensive bar food with a little upscale twist," Essick says. "We're going to get into some more fish and seafood once summer gets here, maybe offer a tuna tartare spring roll, some mussels - we talked about sushi upstairs."

The red-pear salad ($6.75) is one of the restaurant's best-sellers. With its raspberry vinaigrette, mixed greens, blue cheese and candied pecans, it's convincing some bargoers to change a bit.

"There's a lot of cheesesteak eaters here," Essick says. "But I'm having fun with that, too. I do a lot of little things that I think people appreciate. Everything is homemade. Our salad dressings don't come out of a jar like most other places. We roast our own pork and turkey and make our own au jus."

Essick's cheese steak melt ($5.99) is a good example of mixing things up a little bit. The steak features fried onions, pickles and hot peppers that are diced extremely fine and then mixed with the steak and American cheese and served on Texas toast. The signature hot roast-pork sandwich ($5.99) will remind you of Tony Luke's in Philadelphia thanks to its long hot peppers, sharp provolone, optional broccoli rabe and homemade pickled onions made in cider vinegar, crushed red peppers and brown sugar.

If you're craving some Italian, Essick obliges with rigatoni Tuscana ($11.99) with broccoli rabe, sausage, white beans, pine nuts and fresh herbs; linguini and clams ($12.99); chicken Parmesan ($12.50); and three-cheese ravioli ($10.99). The prices are certainly right, since all entrees are served with house salad and choice of fries, mashed potatoes or pasta.

"All of the recipes are different than Braca's," Essick explains. "I wanted to show off my own recipes. But one thing that is the same is the crab cakes ($15.99). I have been making those for 20 years and wanted to bring those with me. They're my recipe. I puree peppers and onions and make them into a liquid, use very little white bread without the crusts and bind them together. They bake nicely with eggs and mayo."

The same crab-cake recipe is scooped together for the crab bites ($6.99) appetizer, which are breaded, flash fried and baked.

"People love them, and a big reason for that is the homemade chipotle tartar sauce with fresh dill pickles, sweet relish, pureed chipotle peppers, mayo and lime juice," Essick said.

It didn't take long for Essick to win over Wildwood. On a whim, the restaurant entered Essick's Cajun spicy cream clam stew in the Wildwood Seafood Festival after the restaurant opened.

"I told (Wally) that we were going to win it," Essick said.

Sure enough, when approximately 500 people judged his clam stew, Essick and Lerro Jr. were brought to the stage to claim their first-place plaque.

"I just made it up when I first got here," Essick said. "We now have people coming in just for bowls of the chowder ($4.99)."

I think it's going to be a lot of fun here. We can't wait to see what will happen in the summer, when we have both floors mobbed with people."

The Lerros

The Lerro family certainly are no strangers to Wildwood. In fact, their Bolero Resort and Blue Water Grille restaurant and bar is on the same block as The Deck at Holly Beach, except the Bolero is on Atlantic Avenue. "We really opened The Deck because we wanted to help out Wildwood," says Wally Lerro Jr. "We lived here our whole lives and we realized Pacific Avenue needed a little help. We think our restaurant and bar can get others motivated to build on Pacific Avenue. We're always trying to help the town as much as we can."

The building

The Deck at Holly Beach is in the location of a former clothing store called The Mailroom, according to Lerro Jr. But that is just a memory, since the building was ripped down and The Deck was built new from the ground up. "We didn't cut any corners when we were building this place," Lerro Jr. said. "We really wanted it to look really nice. We didn't do it on the cheap. The downstairs is a really great place to hang for a drink or dinner, and upstairs will be a real Jimmy Buffett kind of bar with outdoor seating. We're very optimistic what we can do here."

The specials

Looking for a deal? Here are some specials at The Deck at Holly Beach. Mondays: meatball-parm sandwiches are $5.50; Tuesdays: "Wimpy burgers" $4.50; Wednesdays: one-pound of snow crab legs $7.50; Thanksgiving Thursdays: small house salad, roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potato, vegetable, dessert, coffee and tea for $13.50; Fridays: personal pizza $5.50; Saturdays: prime rib, house salad, mashed potatoes, vegetables $14.50; Sundays: linguini or rigatoni with meatballs $7.50.

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