Amagansett's Fish Farm Swimming With A Rich History

The Fish Farm eatery in Amagansett is about as far as you can go away from the hyped-up, expensive, ear-splitting, crowded restaurants ubiquitous in the Hamptons during the summer.The dining is outdoors on picnic tables, the cats may wander over just to check out what tidbits might have fallen to the ground and the tableware is plastic. Sometimes, you may hope for a slight breeze to whisk the bugs away and the air will be perfumed with an earthy ocean odor. After all, this is a working fish farm.

The large rusting edifice that commands your attention upon arrival looks like it’s been deserted for decades—because it has been. The other buildings are in some state of artistic decay, so much so that they have been used as a backdrop for fashion shoots for Harper’s Bazaar and Elle, say owners Robert and Marie Valenti. Native climbing roses grow in and out of the windows of deserted buildings. Famous artists in the area have been known to drop by to pick up, say, big grungy sheets of Styrofoam, as one did the other day, to turn into art.

This is a Hamptons restaurant? Call it a take-out place with outdoor tables. Yet you are not getting fresher seafood anywhere in the Hamptons because the fish was, hours ago, swimming in a pen, or flash-frozen as for sushi. The tuna on this patron’s salad was divine, and the friend’s helping of striped bass was enough for two. Or three.

Did I mention the view? You’re on the water, on the bay side, way out near the end of Lazy Point Road in Promised Land, an area of East Hampton Town on the Napeague Stretch. And when the sun goes down, there’s that sunset view over the water. However, here it’s through a wire fence, and you may see a huge and ungainly barge to your right.

If you are there for an evening meal, the small flock of geese have probably tucked in for the night, but at lunchtime they have the run of the place. The chickens are on the other side of the building, and the roosters may crow. As a place to wine and dine, it’s BYOB with a side dish of funk.

After you park by a chain-link fence, and before you get to the “restaurant” and retail fish shop, you walk past big round fish tanks containing everything from baby koi to striped bass and horseshoe crabs. Currently, there is also a pen of Rhodesian Ridgebacks, as the owners also breed them. Depending on their mood, these stately dogs may bark. Or they may not.

On a recent Saturday night, the dining crowd—and those picking up prepared seafood and sides to go—clearly consisted of summer people, replete with designer sunglasses and a small dog on a leash. Alec Baldwin has been quoted as saying it’s one of his favorite places after a swim.

But the question is, how did the Fish Farm come to be? Native Long Islander Robert Valenti has owned and operated it since 1974—or, rather, that is when he first began applying for the six or seven permits he needed.

“It was like somebody coming along and saying they are going to build automobiles in Amagansett,” he commented wryly. “No one had any experience in something like this.”

It wasn’t until a few years later that he was actually able to get the business up and running. A few years after that, he married and his wife, Marie, joined him in the venture. The couple met when they both worked at the Museum of Natural History in Manhattan. Both have doctorates from New York University—his in fish genetics, hers in fish microbiology. Ichthyology they know.

While it’s known locally as the Fish Farm, it is incorporated as Multi Aquaculture Systems, giving a whiff of the serious commerce that goes on here. It is the first and only aquaculture facility and offshore fish farm on the eastern shore, breeding some 56,000 fish annually.

“We are making history here,” said Mrs. Valenti, a tall woman wearing jeans and work boots who runs the kitchen and shop along with Nadine Nielsen.

The fish—of late, striped bass—are hatched in pens located in a 200-acre “plot” south of Plum Island, leased from New York State. The tidal flush there makes quick work of the fish refuse, which is ultimately used by other sea creatures. When a storm is brewing, the fish are brought ashore in the huge aforementioned barge to be housed in the dozen or so round tanks on land. Unless they are big enough to be harvested (between 1¼ to 1½ pounds), it’s back to the ocean pens to complete the growing process.

Multi Aquaculture also buys seafood from local fishermen and sells it to buyers who come for the catch—as well as the stripers—from as far away as Japan and China, as well as up and down the East Coast.

The large rusting structure directly next door to the Fish Farm—and what you first see when you drive up—once housed a bustling factory that annually processed 20 to 30 million bunker fish into oil and fish meal. The remnants of a spur of the Long Island Rail Road that transported the product out still remain. Portuguese and Italian workers settled nearby, and some of their homes—noticeable by their compact size—can still be seen in the area, right next to new and much larger homes that have gone up in the last decade.

The story that is legend (and apparently true) is that wealthy Midwesterners—friends and family of the folks who owned the original fish factory—built five immense Greek Revival style mansions in the early 1900s, which they named the Devon Colony. Apparently, no one warned them about the smell. The first weekend the houses were occupied, the wind blew in from the east and the pungent odor of processing millions of pounds of fish went right up the revelers’ refined noses. That sent them packing, never to return—until the fish factory closed in 1969.

The bunker had been overfished and the supply ran out. The Nature Conservancy acquired the land and transferred it to the State Parks Commission, in whose hands it remains today. Mr. Valenti moved next door on leased land less than a decade later.

“I’ve always had a passion for raising fish,” Mr. Valenti said. “Don’t ask me why. I enjoy it and I’m good at it. Anybody can keep fish—but raising fish, that’s like having a green thumb. You either have it or you don’t.”

For more information about the Fish Farm, visit fishfarmsite.com.