Astoria Seafood is a family-owned business tucked neatly at the corner of 37th Avenue and 33rd Street in Long Island City. The store opened 12 years ago as a wholesale fish market and expanded into a restaurant 3 years ago.
Spyro Christakos, the owner and manager of Astoria Seafood, developed the restaurant portion of the store to compete in a tough economy.
“I got more involved in the kitchen and cooking,” Christakos said. “We decided to have people pick the fish and have it cook the way they liked. I wanted the restaurant to provide wild, sustainable, and healthy seafood…and low and behold it worked!”
Worked indeed. While Christakos brushes off the bevy of media attention surrounding his fish market turned restaurant, its recent praises are impressively displayed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and otherlocal press.
Astoria Seafood originates from three generations of Greek tradition. Christakos’ grandfather owned a fish market in Greece, and his father opened a wholesale fish shop in Jackson Heights. Christakos was born into this thriving seafood legacy in the 1970s.
