New Haven is Emily Mingrone’s Oyster

Emily Mingrone did not have an affinity for seafood when she opened Fair Haven Oyster Co., which should surprise you. The menu conveys a nuanced, expansive knowledge of seafood, forgoing common yet unsustainable restaurant staples like tuna and salmon for bone-in skate wing and tinned fish. The flavors take global influence but ultimately center local, seasonal New England ingredients in a way that shows careful creativity and deep local familiarity. Fair Haven Oyster Co. tastes and looks like the work of someone who’s spent a lifetime by the sea.

Instead, Mingrone grew up in Hamden (“New Haven was my backyard”). She played games in her dad’s office while he worked as the Executive Chef of the Quinnipiack Club, a now-defunct rich person’s spot serving French cuisine. “It reminded me of Clue. There was a bowling alley and leather wingback chairs.” She would hang out downstairs, waiting for him to bring buttery leftovers for his family to enjoy at home.

Eventually, Mingrone’s dad left to open a deli and catering business in Branford where she worked in high school. Although she could have stayed, one day taking the reins, she thought the “right thing” was to go corporate. She studied psychology at West Conn and was on track to get a standard cubicle job. But after trying to transfer to Southern and having hardly any of her credits move over, she did not see a worthwhile investment in extreme debt to retake classes in a messy state college system. Meanwhile, she had been working desk jobs and waiting tables on the side to pay her way through school. She found more love in the camaraderie of the service industry than working in customer service at Verizon.

She pivoted at an age considered later in life for many chefs: 27. “I’m only 38 now, so this was all happening quickly. I went to a local culinary school because I have supported myself the whole way, so I had to be creative. I still needed to work but needed a certificate to get the jobs I wanted.” She built her chops in stuffy Fairfield County joints and local butcheries, where the lack of supervision allowed her to experiment with tasting menus and chef’s table nights. Her dad ended up opening a second deli in Milford, and Emily went back to work for him for a time to see if the business aligned with her culinary ambitions. “I thought I would commit. And I couldn't. Something was not jiving, and I wanted it to be the thing so bad, but I didn't think I could ever make it what I wanted it to be.”

Mingrone ended up back in the city she grew up with. Throughout her childhood and 10-year career, Mingrone has kept a thermometer on New Haven’s food scene as both a customer and a cook. “I grew up eating well, at least on the weekends when I was with Dad. And that inspired me to want to learn to cook well. I like eating as much as I like cooking. But it's hard because everything becomes R&D. So, can you ever really just casually enjoy something on the weekend?”

In many ways, the scene in New Haven today has lost much of what came before. “Everything's becoming commercial and corporate.” Yale’s dominion over downtown properties has driven up rent, pushing out local restaurants to make room for short-term clientele. “I couldn't believe it when Shake Shack opened on the green. I'm just like, what's happened?”

In other ways, the scene has remained the same. New Haven was just declared the “Pizza Capital of the US.” New “New-Haven style apizza” restaurants continue to pop up on Wooster Street. “The pizza is great. It is what it is. But there's not much new school cuisine, for lack of a better word. And it makes no sense to me because it's a booming city with many young professionals, not just young. The demographic is so widespread and eclectic. I love the city. And I always wanted an experience like I'm offering here.”

Mingrone runs Tavern On State, a highly-praised restaurant that opened a little over five years ago. She created a butcher shop next door, ensuring her restaurant would have the best possible food. She started chef’s table nights; she has tasting menus; her dad now works at her restaurant in a “full circle moment.” She reached a pinnacle of success for any chef, but there were still gaps she wanted to fill. She wondered a very New England question: “If I want good oysters, where am I gonna go?”

Fair Haven Oyster Co. opened in 2022 on the Quinnipiac River. For Mingrone, the location picked her. The previous restaurant on the property, a seafood shack, closed recently, and the property owners were customers of Tavern. The building was in dire straits: “It was just like this long rectangular room. There was this algae ridden lobster tank in the front. The floor was black with yellow masking tape to make it look like a street.” Despite its condition, Mingrone knew the waterfront space had potential. She hadn’t planned on opening a seafood restaurant prior to seeing the space, but “the space sort of dictated what it was.” The area’s history as an oyster port in the 1800s predestined what it would become.

Mingrone and her team transformed the space into a boat you would happily be stuck on. Sunny portholes dot the ocean blue walls. Sitting on the deck, the saltwater floods your nose. Bartenders feel like second mates, line cooks feel like the deck crew. Mingrone leads a strong ship.

The space and the environment inform Mingrone’s menu, dishes coming and going with the changing seasons. In the winter, she serves “belly warmers.” But spring into early summer is a favorite. "We're all tired of having nothing all winter. And then, as soon as the peas come out and the spring onions, it's like, oh my God, I finally have all this bright, fresh flavor. But there's nothing better than a perfect summer.”

The same thoughtfulness of the season goes for the fish on the menu. Mingrone sources seafood that actually lives around here. Instead of salmon, a fish that “everybody is doing,” she serves skate, frequently called a “trash fish.” Instead of shipping tuna from the Atlantic, Mingrone serves local New England clams. Local fish is more fresh, readily available, and tastes better.

But this approach to food is also inherently sustainable. Overfishing of specific fish has led to widespread habitat and species destruction: bluefin tuna populations have declined close to 99% since fishing began. “I'm not trying to be a sustainable restaurant. This style is how I like to cook and how the food tastes. I don't need to put organic on anything. I source responsibly. But that was over years and years of building a reputation as such.” It’s a beautiful, unintentional approach to sustainability that comes from just listening to what people need, to cooking instincts built over decades, and to what the environment is giving away.

If New Haven is Mingrone’s oyster, Fair Haven Oyster Co. is the pearl she hand-shines for the people. She’s revealing to us the beauty, bounty, and briny glory that’s been beneath our feet the whole time.