With their new, permanent home in the 19th century Dimon mansion, 18 Bay Restaurant settles down

It started on Sept. 1 with an Instagram post. A series of photos that popped up after years of nothing. First, a picture of the façade of a stunning historic home with a mansard roof and wine-colored double front doors. Then, the real eye-catcher: a snap of ornate brass doorknobs flourished by a central flower design and trim plates that, just below the keyhole, feature the head of a wolf. 

Chef Adam Kopels hadn’t posted a darn thing on his personal page since January 2023, and nothing much, either, on 18 Bay’s official Instagram page, since he and chef Elizabeth Ronzetti shuttered the popular Shelter Island incarnation of their slow, moveable feast in December 2022. 

So when Kopels posted those shots of the very recognizable Dimon Estate on Manor Road in Jamesport (and adapted that wolf’s head as his profile picture), the buzz it created grew louder and louder with every whispered, “Is it true…?!?” 

It was and it is. And it will be the permanent home of 18 Bay Restaurant — the beloved farm-to-forage-to-table eatery owned by Southold residents Kopels and Ronzetti that started over 20 years ago in Bayville and has been searching for its very own home. It seems, as far as addresses go, that the fourth time’s a charm.

Bringing It All Back Home

If you’ve eaten at any of 18 Bay’s incarnations — in Bayville, or in either of the two spots it held court in on Shelter Island — you know you’re in for something special: intensely fresh and ever-changing, inspired yet with a consistent center of clarity. It’s not about technique for technique’s sake, whipping familiar things into altered forms — it’s about expressing and celebrating real food in the most delicious way possible. That’s what lights up Kopels and Ronzetti. 

“It’s not a four-season cycle here; it’s 12 seasons,” says Kopels. And they truly do take a giddily granular approach to seasonality — what’s swimming this month, or week, or day, might not be what’s at the end of a fishing line the next. What is currently a flower will turn into a seed, and you can bet something can and will be done with each of those stages in a given plant’s lifespan. Then there are the quadrants of antipasti, the renowned fresh pastas, the freshly butchered proteins for mains. In a way, the beauty of the menu is… there kind of is no menu, or at least no set one. From one day to the next, what’s on the plate is what comes through the kitchen doors a la minute.

The irony of 18 Bay Restaurant is that it hasn’t been located at 18 Bay Ave. in Bayville, a petite South Shore spot that had about that many seats, for nearly 15 years. When operations moved to Shelter Island in 2011, they gained just a few more chairs and tables and kept the name. Initially, that had some folks scratching their heads — why name a restaurant after its old address? But for Ronzetti and Kopels, it was their first and their only: where they, as chefs and as a couple, came to solidify what mattered to them in the kitchen and in life.  

It was food. Food and a feeling that didn’t need to be sequestered to a spot on a map, instead harkening a style of cooking, a unique snapshot of eastern Long Island that goes beyond an address, taking on a life and identity of its own. Even when Ronzetti and Kopels took a two-year hiatus, heading to the West Coast to stretch their talents, 18 Bay never really closed. It just took a nap while they searched for the right place to wake it up.

Home Is Where the Blowfish Is

When publications pigeonhole a restaurant into a style of food — Italian, Thai, Spanish, Caribbean, French, West Indian — it certainly helps a hungry customer aim their desires in the direction of their hankerings. But for 18 Bay, that’s always been a little tricky. More often than not, Italian is the category that sticks. But it’s not red-sauce Italian. It’s more about the spirit of simple, fresh ingredients and expressing those things in the best possible way.

“I think it’s okay to say we are a contemporary Italian restaurant in the sense of the simplicity of Italian cooking, right? You don’t over-orchestrate anything. You know what the vegetable is on your plate,” says Ronzetti, whose pasta-making skills are this side of exquisite. “I think the philosophy of what we’re cooking is: It’s what’s here. If it’s swimming here we make it, if it’s growing here we cook it. And I think that’s important.”

So while you certainly won’t find bluefish on a menu in Campania, or Wickham’s Razor apples gracing a plate in Liguria, embracing regional ingredients has always been at the foundation of 18 Bay.

“We never wanted to over-define what it means — we’re that kind of restaurant, we’re these kinds of chefs — because if it means something different to someone else, you don’t want to take it away from them, right?” says Kopels. “So that’s the restaurant. The restaurant means something to everybody in a different way.”

With the purchase of the Dimon Estate, Kopels and Ronzetti have nearly tripled the capacity they had on Shelter Island, with 60 seats in the beautiful main dining room downstairs and 20 above for extra-busy evenings. The front of house is overseen by Chris Cardone, who was bestowed a Diagio Bartender of the Year designation for his excellent way with cocktails, and the far larger kitchen space is run by former Halyard executive chef Nathan Hitchcock.

Originally a farmhouse constructed in 1707 by the Dimon family, the property was rebuilt in 1860 in the fanciful Second Empire architectural style seen today — and painstakingly restored as such by previous owner Matthew Kar after a devastating fire in 2005. 

The estate went on the market in 2023, right around the time Ronzetti and Kopels ended their 12-year run on Shelter Island. The notion of no longer being tenants — of giving their business the same kind of roots they give their food — was the next move. 

Along with the beautifully restored house, Kar added a substantial vegetable garden, an apple orchard with multiple varieties, and peach trees to the three-plus acres that 370 Manor Lane occupies. For Ronzetti and Kopels, it’s a dream come true — and they’re ready to bolster their menus, both kitchen and cocktail, in the foreseeable future. 

“Matt [Kar] built a beautiful, beautiful garden, and he installed the apple orchard. And there’s certainly places for us to do outdoor garden dinners and that kind of thing,” says Kopels, “But mainly, our focus now is to try to grow as much as we can on as much of the property. One of our focuses is to get a winter garden going, which would consist of chicories, radicchios, cardoons, puntarella… if it can grow 10, 11 months of the year, it’s fun to play with different stuff.”

The restaurant opened to a packed house the entire first weekend of service in late October, welcoming back old friends and fans and bringing plenty of new ones into the fold. But even as  Ronzetti and Kopels get used to the new space on a new street with a new staff, the notion that it’s theirs lends a kind of warm, familiar gravitational pull to the fourth home of 18 Bay.  

“We’re in a different place in our careers, you know?” says Ronzetti. “I think to not just be running a restaurant, but to have that opportunity to really expand on what it is that we’ve always loved to do… yeah, we can do that here. We couldn’t really do it in another space.”