Farm-to-table taught us never to eat asparagus in winter. Ethical meat advocacy introduced free-range and grass-fed to our everyday dining lexicon. And increased attention towards sustainable seafood has encouraged us to rethink consumption of Atlantic salmon, bluefin tuna, mahi-mahi, and orange roughy.
But of course, local seafood from New York’s harbors has been hard to come by. Water pollution and overfishing near decimated local oyster reefs and fisheries in the 20th century. But today, there are many organizations in New York actively working to restore New York Harbor back to the dynamic environment it once was, such as Billion Oyster Project on Governor’s Island and New York’s Blue Point Brewery.
So in an attempt to help turn the tide against overfishing and polluted waterways, the following restaurants have become stewards of the sea-to-plate movement, actively involving themselves in conservation programs and adding trash fishes and bycatches to their menus. In fact, many of these restaurants work with Billion Oyster Project, who collects cast-off shells from the restaurants and takes them to be cured, seeded with oyster larvae, and restored back to New York’s harbor and its repopulating oyster reefs. (We’ve marked those participating restaurants with an asterisk.) Eat at these restaurants to get a taste of how sustainable seafood should be done.
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