The seafood house at 458 Fire Island Ave in Babylon Village is changing hands. Babylon Fish & Clam, family owned since 1970, announced on its own page that the restaurant has been sold, and that the new owners plan to reopen the doors around Christmas.

The last day of service under its longtime owners came on Labor Day, September 7. The restaurant stayed open through the holiday, closed the following Tuesday, and handed over the keys that Wednesday. In the announcement, the owners told regulars to come by one more time for their favorites before the change.

Fifty-six years on Fire Island Avenue

Babylon Fish & Clam was never only a restaurant. The building housed a clam bar and a dining room serving seafood, steak and pasta, with indoor and outdoor seating, and a fresh fish market operating inside the same walls, a combination that made it a stop both for a sit-down dinner and for the night's cooking at home. It kept year-round hours in a village where waterfront dining skews seasonal.

Comments on the announcement filled with decades of memories within hours, from longtime customers who had been coming for baked clams since the earliest years to neighbors wishing the family a good retirement. The page counts about 1,900 followers, a large share of them within a few miles of the door.

What comes next

The departing owners said the buyers plan to reopen around Christmas. The new operation has not yet published its own name, menu or opening date, so the specifics of what returns to 458 Fire Island Ave, and how much of the old formula survives, will become clear when the new owners make their own announcement.

The handoff lands in a Babylon Village dining scene that has seen steady turnover on and around Fire Island Avenue and Deer Park Avenue in recent years, with longtime names giving way to new operators who often keep the bones of what worked. A waterside seafood building with a built-in market and a five-decade customer habit is the kind of inheritance most new restaurant owners never get.

If you want to follow along

The restaurant's page at facebook.com/babylonfishandclam remains active and is where the sale and the Christmas timeline were announced. Watch it, or the storefront itself at 458 Fire Island Ave, for the new operation's first signs of life as the holidays approach.

Sources