If you like your meal with a water view (and who doesn’t?), you’ll be happy to know that Minnow at the Galley Ho in New Suffolk opened for the season on Thursday, May 1. Now heading into their third season, the restaurant, owned by Andrea Tese, has a Mediterranean-inspired seafood menu with an emphasis on local ingredients, which gets more local all the time.
“We source only line, trap or pot-caught local fish from local fishermen via local distributors such as Braun’s, Southold Fish Market and North Fork Seafood,” says Tese. “This means that we do not use imported fish or fish caught by trawlers, draggers, or any other commercial method of fishing that has bykill.”
This year, Tese has installed a pound trap in the bay and has obtained fishing licenses to harvest fish in this traditional method. Composed of hardwood poles and a network of nets, fish are guided into an enclosed area (the pound) that they cannot escape. Used for centuries by Native Americans on Long Island and elsewhere, the fish collected via pound traps are of higher quality with less bycatch.
Tese and her partners, which includes musician Jon Divello, who also performs at Minnow, tend the trap once a day, weather permitting. The catch is “dependent on the temperature of the water and the migration of different species,” says Tese. Weakfish has already been sighted in the bay and squid should be showing up soon as well; in the coming months her team hopes to harvest striped bass, fluke, black sea bass and porgy.
New dishes for this summer’s menu include Sicilian lemon risotto with pistachio pesto and coconut basil poached fish (fresh catch, of course) with fennel and leeks.
“This is an exciting summer because through the addition of the pound traps, I will be able to cut out the last link in the seafood supply chain and be my own direct supplier,” Tese notes. “There is so much misinformation and deception in the seafood industry, and this feels like the most foolproof way to circumvent all of that.”
Minnow at the Galley Ho, 650 First St., New Suffolk, 631-734-8474; minnowrestaurant.com
