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It’s like a wine trail, but for seafood lovers. Specifically, lovers of seafood harvested off Long Island. And it’s nearly 75 miles long.
Welcome to the Long Island Seafood Cuisine Trail.
The wending route along the South Shore stretches from Bay Shore to Montauk and features 20 seafood stops at local restaurants and fish markets, and several points of interest such as the Long Island Maritime Museum in W. Sayville, or the Montauk Lighthouse, even Blue Island Oyster Farm tours off Bay Shore.
The trail was unveiled at a special event Wednesday at The Snapper Inn in Oakdale. Located on Connetquot River, the restaurant has been in the Remmer family since 1929, and family members were also on hand to host the event.
Snapper Inn is also among the trail’s seafood stops being celebrated for “proudly serving and selling locally raised and wild-caught, sustainably harvested fish and shellfish while promoting Long Island’s seafood industry,” according Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office.
The trail was developed as a collaboration between the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, and the Cornell Cooperative Extension Suffolk County and designed to give baymen and fishermen a boost in sales and exposure, as well as the local hospitality industries, and overall tourism.
“It’s all about the food,” said Richard Ball, the state’s agriculture commissioner. “And today is all about the seafood. It’s a way of life on Long Island. You’ve been at the forefront of the eat local movement, and local food, for centuries.”
“Make no mistake, seafood is part of agriculture,” he continued. “Certainly the pandemic taught us about supply and demand and the food system that was broken at that time, and the opportunities to do something about that are really happening today.”
The Long Island Seafood Trail comes as part of Hochul’s larger Blue Food Transformation Initiative, he explained.
“The idea was to invest in, and focus on reinvigorating New York’s wild-caught seafood and aqua-cultural industries, and to support the producers who are so important to this economy here — but more importantly, to our economy across New York state,” he said. “Let’s not depend on food from another region, or another country, if ever we have another situation like that [COVID-19] in our state.”
The North Shore Trail, which will run from Oyster Bay to Greenport, is also under development, officials said.
“This is going to boost, not only to our seafood industry, it’s going to help our farmers along the way, and it’s going to help the tourism economy,” Ball concluded in his statements. “So it’s a win-win-win for Long Island today.”
The mobile app
The event also featured a sneak peek of a Long Island Seafood Cuisine Trail digital app that’s in development.
The app is being designed to make it even easier for customers to discover Long Island establishments that prepare, serve or otherwise sell local seafood-centric dishes.
An online version of the mobile app is available on the Long Island Seafood Trail website.
The mobile app is expected to be available on the Apple App Store and Google Play in the coming weeks.
Top: Richard Ball, the state’s agriculture commissioner, speaks at Wednesday’s unveiling and ceremonial ribbon-cutting ceremony on the Connetquot River in Oakdale. (Credit: Michael White)
