Anker in Greenport brings 'nose to tail' cooking to Long Island fish
At Anker in Greenport, mussels are braised with roasted fennel, garlic and leeks and topped with lots of fresh herbs. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
They were out of grilled fish collars the first time I went to Anker, and I don’t know what surprised me more: that a local restaurant had fish collars on the menu, or that they had become so popular that they were sold out.
When Greenport’s Anker opened in 2019, it received three stars from Newsday for chef Wolfgang Ban’s elegant, fish-centric fare: oysters with yuzu foam, fluke crudo with blueberries, grilled blowfish with salsa verde. But when Axel Irizzary and Will Horowitz took over earlier this year, they shifted gears. Fish still anchored the menu, but the preparations became bigger and bolder. They went full steam ahead on local and brought aboard the nose-to-tail ethos that yielded those lemon-rosemary fish collars, plus swordfish bone marrow, and even candied fish scales on the burnt honey pie. (No worries: the tiny scales don’t taste like fish and the honey custard doesn’t taste burnt.)
Will Horowitz, left, and Axel Irizzary collaborate in the kitchen at Anker in Greenport. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
Even when it’s not visible, the ethos is evident. Thwarted in my desire for fish collars, I sat at Anker’s bar, with a view of the kitchen, and ordered a daily special of monkfish soup. The only ingredients I could make out in the modest-looking bowl were hunks of monkfish and minced parsley. But the flavor of was so complex. What is in this? Irizzary said he saves all his fish trimmings and makes two stocks: a light, relatively short-cooked one and a turbocharged one whose ingredients are smoked before being simmered. Both stocks wind up in the soup, along with aromatics — and a lot of parsley.
On another occasion, seated upstairs on the deck overlooking Greenport Harbor and Shelter Island, those stocks formed the backbeat for a caramelized-plum sauce that bathed a bowl of fat mussels mingling with big chunks of roasted fennel and leeks.
Irizzary, who grew up fishing in Puerto Rico, spent more than a decade running various kitchens in Montauk. His collaborator, Will Horowitz, was raised in Orient and went on to operate the Manhattan restaurants, Ducks Eatery and Harry & Ida’s, and to author the 2019 cookbook, "Salt Smoke Time: Homesteading and Heritage Techniques for the Modern Kitchen."
Horowitz also takes an interest in the kitchens of two other nearby restaurants owned by former tech executive Christoph Mueller. In 2018, Mueller bought the decades-old Harbourfront Deli and transformed it into Green Hill Kitchen, serving barbecue and more. Next, he converted Deep Water Bar & Grille into Anker and, this summer, he remade Industry Standard into Alpina, a cozy wine bar specializing in the food and wine of Northern Italy and Switzerland.
As Anker heads into the cooler weather, the menu will focus on big plates from land and sea: shareable grilled whole black sea bass ($42), hickory-smoked lamb brisket ($49) and daily specials such as two-for-one lobsters (Thursday, $44), fried local fisherman’s platter (Friday. $36), bouillabaisse (Saturday, $36) and mussels with fries (Sunday, $22)
"Old school" selections include a lobster roll ($32), New England clam chowder ($14), fish and chips ($24). From the raw bar: local oysters, littleneck clams, snow-crab and king-crab claws, head-on prawns and more.
Anker, which also operates a small fish market, is at 47 Front St., Greenport, 631-477-1300, ankerny.com.
