Why it's so hard to find local fish at Long Island restaurants

Long Island is surrounded by water, home to New York State’s four largest commercial fishing ports (Montauk, Hampton Bays, Shinnecock, Greenport), not to mention fleets of recreational anglers.

And yet throughout Nassau and Suffolk, the seafood you see most often on restaurant menus is salmon, branzino and shrimp. Not only are these not local fish — for the most part they are not even domestic fish.

Tuna, swordfish and cod might well have been caught by local fishermen, there's an even better chance your fluke’s area code is 631. But you’ll search farther and wider for a restaurant serving bluefish, blackfish, black sea bass, golden tilefish, weakfish or any of the other three dozen species that call our waters home.

"I think part of the problem is awareness," said Kristin Gerbino, a Riverhead-based fisheries specialist at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Marine Program. "A lot of people assume that if they see a fish on a local restaurant menu, it must be local." That’s why Cornell recently launched a "Seafood Trail" that highlights restaurants and fish markets that serve and sell local species. Right now, the trail goes from Bay Shore to Montauk, but there are plans to expand it to Suffolk’s North Shore and all of Nassau.

The Seafood Trail was launched in March at an event at Oakdale’s Snapper Inn, a restaurant named after a local fish. Kerry Blanchard, general manager and niece of founder Henry Remmer’s grandson, explained that, in the summer of 1929, Remmer bought a piece of land on the Connetquot River and then set up his three sons with rowboats so they could earn money from whatever they caught. They caught so many "snappers" — juvenile bluefish — that they built a small structure and, the next year, established a restaurant.

"Back then," Blanchard said, "there was nothing but local seafood — snappers and mature bluefish, weakfish, oysters, clams, crabs."

Nearly a century later, the menu now encompasses Prince Edward Island mussels with andouille sausage and horseradish-oreganata-crusted Atlantic salmon (not to mention grilled pork chops with peach-honey compote and Jamaican jerk chicken). But the top seller is the seared "fish of the day," which might be local cod or striped bass. At lunch, you’d be wise to get the Long Island fluke sandwich, blackened or fried, with chipotle aioli. Local clams and squid figure in the seafood fra diavolo and you’ll always find local fried local calamari, littleneck clams and oysters.

A word here about mollusks: Clams and oysters (and, to a lesser extent, squid) are Long Island’s homegrown seafood superstars, widely available almost everywhere fish is served. In fact, some restaurants that tout their "local fish" are only serving local shellfish.

It’s finfish where there’s so much room to improve. Mike Wydro, executive chef at Sparrow Kitchen & Cocktails in Garden City, is passionate about fish, having served as sous chef at the late, great Manhattan seafood shrine Esca (2000-21). But his kitchen is constrained by customer demand. "Salmon is our No. 1 seller," he said. "Salmon, halibut, they are always an easier sale than skate wings or bluefish or tilefish or monkfish." The latter, he noted, actually costs him less than the Faroe Island salmon he serves, but "I will sell less of it."

Wydro’s strategy is to feature local fish as a daily special. It might be a duo of tuna crudo and tataki with fennel salad, pan-roasted whole monkfish tail with potatoes, ramps and Meyer lemon, or grilled whole bluefish with fennel and Sicilian olives. He is looking forward to striped bass coming back into local waters so he can have his way with it.

Sparrow’s striped bass will come from Gra-Bar Fish, a leading fish distributor in Copiague. For now, Grab-Bar’s striped bass is from Delaware, but fluke, black sea bass, porgy, monkfish, golden tilefish, skate and squid are from Long Island. Founder Bart Molin estimates that 20% of the fish he sells are local, another 20% are domestic, and the rest are foreign.

Molin broke down his top four sellers: salmon, branzino, shrimp and tuna. Tuna, he explained, swims all over the Atlantic Ocean and is commonly "landed" here from June to October. As for the other three species, they are, for the most part, from foreign farms: While there are wild salmon "runs" on the West Coast from May to September, the vast majority of salmon in local restaurants and markets is farmed Atlantic salmon, raised in the cold waters of Canada, Scotland and Norway. And, while there are wild-caught shrimp from the American South and South America (as well as a tiny catch out of Montauk), most of the shrimp here are farmed (and frozen) in South America or Asia. Branzino? Almost all are farmed in the Mediterranean.

Molin understands the appeal of farmed fish to a restaurant chef. "With striped bass or tuna, for example, the availability and price can fluctuate. The advantage of farm-raised fish is that it’s consistently available and the price doesn’t vary very much," he said. However, it’s not always the most economical choice. Right now, he’s selling 1½-pound branzinos for $7.25; similar-sized porgies are $3.99. "It has a bad connotation; people think of it as a cheap fish, but it is delicious."

"I love porgy," said Alex Moschos, owner of Neraki in Huntington. "But it has a stigma as a poor person’s fish and people just don’t order it." Once an occasional visitor to the Greek seafood restaurant, it’s been voted off the Island. Neraki’s top selling fish at lunch is salmon, at dinner it’s a tie between branzino and orata, both farm-raised in Greece. But the first fish listed on his menu is one of Moschos’ favorites: black sea bass, local and available all year-round.

Moschos is the rare Long Island restaurateur who goes to the Hunts Point market in the Bronx twice a week to buy his own fish (at 2 a.m., mind you). He strives to find local fluke, tuna, swordfish, squid, monkfish and blackfish (his favorite). Whether it’s sea bass or fluke, or branzino or orata, every whole fish at Neraki gets the same treatment: grilled and then anointed with olive oil, oregano and lemon.

The preparations at Lost at Sea tend to be more cheffy, but they still rely, as much as possible, on what chef-owner and executive chef Alexis Trolf and his chef de cuisine, Alecia St. Aubrey, can source from local waters. The kitchen might nap tilefish with mole, create a crudo of striped bass with fennel and sunflower seeds, or skewer chunks of swordfish and drizzle them with walnut romesco and salsa verde.

Trolf loves skate, but finds it most appeals to his customers if it has a "hard sear" or, even better, is deep fried into schnitzel. "They typically don’t like strong-flavored fish like mackerel or bluefish," he noted, and "sometimes I wonder whether they really like fish — our biggest seller is hanger steak!"

At the other end of Long Island, Jeremy Blutstein seems to have an easier time selling local fish than do chefs farther west. The executive chef at Mavericks Montauk, which reopens for the season on May 1, is an avowed, and uncompromising, supporter of local fish — that’s the only fish he puts on his menu. Bluefish might be pressed into rillette service, fluke could wind up in a crudo or be sautéed, whole, a la meunière. Swordfish and tuna (local only) are cut through the bone and served as big, honking steaks.

Blutstein called branzino 'the new tilapia" and characterized farmed salmon as "ground zero for ‘I don’t care.’ " (He advised salmon diehards to seek out steelhead trout, which is farmed in New York State and is a "better-eating alternative.") He’s frustrated with a dining public that "is so concerned with non-GMO this and no-hormones that and all the buzzwords. They have the power to demand fish that has not been on a plane or a train, but don't seem to care."

Blutstein, who has spent most of his life on the East End, treasures the relationships he has with local fishermen and farmers, largely avoiding middlemen. But, for chefs who don’t work within view of fishing boats, Montauk has a perfect middleman, Dock to Dish, a wholesaler owned by commercial fishermen that is dedicated to connecting local restaurants with the local catch. Partner K.C. Boyle said that the company delivers to more than 300 restaurants in New York City, a couple of dozen on Long Island including Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton, Blackbird Kitchen & Cocktails in Wantagh, Luca in Stony Brook, Coastal Kitchen in Bay Shore, Shands General in Patchogue and Leon 1909 on Shelter Island.

"There’s just too much farmed salmon and branzino coming from the other side of the world," he lamented. "Here on Long Island we have tremendous diversity — some seasonal, yes, but lots of species we can source year-round." If he could "shine a spotlight on one species," it would be that tilefish — "unbelievably delicious, abundant and well managed."

For Boyle, it’s not just about good eating, though. "People want to know where their food is coming from," he said. "There’s a lot of mistrust of imported products — and that’s before tariffs make them more expensive."

He’s also a fierce advocate for the local economy. "When you use local fish, you support local fishermen. We are just trying to connect the dots."