There is a version of the summer food festival that costs $45 to enter, sells you a plastic tasting cup and leaves you hungry. This is not that.

The Long Island Seafood Festival returns to the Long Island Maritime Museum on August 22 and 23, and general admission is $10. Children under 12 get in free. The ten dollars covers off-site parking, the shuttle buses and all of the entertainment, which leaves you with the entire rest of your budget for the actual point of the exercise.

Where it is, and why the location is half the appeal

The museum sits at 88 West Avenue in West Sayville, on the north shore of the Great South Bay. This is not an incidental backdrop. West Sayville was one of the centers of the Great South Bay oyster industry, and the museum exists because of it.

Founded on December 16, 1966 as the Suffolk Marine Museum and opened to the public in May 1968, it received its charter from the New York State Board of Regents in 1983 and was renamed the Long Island Maritime Museum in 1993, when its focus widened from Suffolk County to the whole Island. It runs today on a full time staff of two, a handful of part timers and a volunteer force that does much of the restoration work.

Its collections cover boat building, shipwrecks, shellfishing and recreational boating, and the star of the fleet is the Priscilla, an oyster sloop built in 1888 and designated a National Historic Landmark. She is on site and viewable during the festival.

Eating oysters within sight of the boat that used to go get them is a better piece of context than any interpretive panel.

The food

Two seafood sponsors occupy the main pavilions. Blue Island Oyster Company works the Great South Bay and beyond, and Claws Seafood Market handles the other half of the equation. Between them the festival promises everything from raw bars to lobster rolls.

Additional seafood trucks fill in around them, and there are non-seafood options for anyone in your group who came for the day out rather than the shellfish.

One rule to know before you pack a bag: outside food and beverages are not permitted. The $10 gate price is subsidized by what happens inside, which is the trade-off that keeps admission at $10.

Music, crafts and the rest of it

Multiple acts play the main stage across the two days. Seating is standing room only on a first-come basis, so a folding chair or a blanket is a reasonable thing to bring for the stage area.

There is an arts and crafts fair, sponsor exhibits, and children's entertainment including face painting and pirate activities. It is a genuinely family-shaped festival rather than an adults-only raw bar event.

Getting there, which requires a plan

This is the part that catches people out. There is no on-site parking for general attendees.

Free shuttle buses run from two points. One is the Baymen Soccer Field at Cherry Avenue and Tariff Street. The other is the Sayville LIRR station, which makes this an unusually easy festival to reach without a car: Montauk Branch to Sayville, then a shuttle to the gate.

Given the two-day format, the calmer visit is Sunday. Saturday will be the bigger crowd, and Saturday is also the day the Long Island Celtic Festival is running at Old Westbury Gardens on the other end of the Island.

Tickets

Admission is $10 per person at the gate, cash only, so hit an ATM before you get on the shuttle. Advance tickets are also $10 plus processing fees through Eventbrite, which mainly buys you a shorter gate line rather than a discount.

Vendor and sponsor questions go to Terry Lister-Blitman at 631-854-4974.

Why a $10 seafood festival is a good deal on Long Island

The Great South Bay oyster industry that built West Sayville largely collapsed in the twentieth century under a combination of overharvesting, disease and water quality problems. The recovery underway now, driven by aquaculture operations and shellfish restoration work in the bay, is one of the more encouraging environmental stories in the region.

Buying a lobster roll at a museum festival is not a restoration strategy. But it is two days in August when a working piece of that history is open, the boat is right there, and it costs a family of four with two young children twenty dollars to walk in.