On Sunday, July 18, 2027, National Caviar Day salutes salted sturgeon roe, a luxury that New York bars once handed out free. The story behind that swing runs through a New Jersey river town.
When Does National Caviar Day Take Place?
Every July 18. The day carries no official status.
Caviar, New Jersey
Who began the food day is unknown. The American caviar trade, though, has a clear starting point: Bendix Blohm, a German immigrant who arrived in 1852.
Long before Blohm, the Lenni Lenape hunted sturgeon in the Delaware every spring. European settlers found the meat “strong, oily” and fed the eggs to livestock, writer Inga Saffron notes.
Blohm hoped to sell pickled sturgeon to Germany. He struggled on New York’s Hudson River, then moved to the Delaware, National Geographic reports. He brought in German experts from New York to teach him the harvest.
A boomtown grew up along the Delaware in the 1860s. Its name was Caviar. It sat less than 150 miles south of Manhattan, and by 1870 Blohm was shipping barrels of American caviar to Hamburg.
The town had its own store, post office and rail line. In fishing season, its population swelled from a few dozen to about 400, with fishermen bunking in dormitories near the docks.
By 1895, 22 wholesalers worked there. Fifteen train cars of roe left each day for New York harbor, where steamships carried it on to Hamburg. Packers salted the roe heavily, pressed it into a dry cake and wrapped it in ice and straw.
A free bar snack
In the 1880s, caviar was so plentiful that New York bartenders gave it away on sandwiches. The salt made drinkers thirstier, which was the whole point.
Prices climbed fast. A 135-pound keg cost German buyers $9 in 1885, about $300 today. Around 1900, that keg went for $100, or roughly $3,900 now.
Then the fish ran out. Overfishing had gutted the sturgeon population by 1900. The town is now called Bayside, its old rail line lies under asphalt, and the land has gone back to marsh. Even the docks have rotted away.
Sturgeon in Trouble
That collapse foreshadowed a global one. In 2022, the IUCN found all 26 remaining sturgeon and paddlefish species threatened with extinction, the World Wildlife Fund reports. Almost two-thirds are critically endangered.
Poaching for the illegal caviar trade is a major cause, WWF says. Dams, mining and habitat loss add to it.
Washington has stepped in for one species. Beluga sturgeon were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, effective October 21, 2004. A year later, on October 28, 2005, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service suspended beluga imports from Black Sea countries.
There’s a hopeful note, too. Modern producers raise sturgeon on aquaculture farms instead of draining wild stocks, and the fish are slowly returning to Eastern waters.
Buying and Tasting Caviar
- Read the label. Under FDA policy, the word “caviar” on its own means salted sturgeon roe.
- Expect other roe to carry the fish’s name first, as in “salmon caviar.”
- Look for an artificial color statement on dyed roe, which the FDA requires.
- Buy from sellers who can document where their caviar came from.
- Try salmon or trout roe on crackers if sturgeon caviar is out of budget.
- Back groups working to protect sturgeon rivers and spawning grounds.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can travelers bring beluga caviar home from the Black Sea region?
No. The suspension also ended the old 250-gram personal allowance.
Which sturgeon species are already gone?
The Chinese paddlefish is extinct, and the Yangtze sturgeon no longer lives in the wild.
Are any sturgeon recovering?
Some are. White sturgeon numbers in Canada’s Fraser River have risen, WWF notes.
Is all caviar covered by the beluga rules?
Osetra, sevruga and U.S. white sturgeon caviar weren’t part of that suspension.