Caption: Rego’s Neighborhood, NYC.
Writing about Saul Zabar – in the preceding blog – prompted me to reflect on a related story from 2010: Rego’s Smoked Fish.
On one of my several visits to New York from North Carolina, Saul had me ride along to see a smoked fish supplier, Rego’s, that used to do lots of business with Zabar’s.
Rego’s, founded in 1949, once prosperous, was now seemingly fading away, left behind technologically and with none of the octogenarian owner’s children wanting to come into the business.
Rego’s is in the Middle Village and Rego neighborhoods of Queens. Saul termed it a “nice primitive operation”; its “gravity ovens” for smoking fish qualify it as an antique in an era of computerized ovens – an endangered antique it turns out.
Founded and owned by Conrad (Connie) Spizz, now in his mid-80s, the company was recovering from a failed partnership with a conglomerate of banker smoker-wannabes.
Things may be on the upswing with a new smoking partner, Mitchell Gardiner by name. Much of Saul’s trip is to ascertain if the new partner is capable of continuing Rego’s high tradition of “meticulous craftsmanship and old-world standards”.
For Saul, besides the decades-long relationship with Connie, it’s Rego’s gravity ovens that keep him coming back and wanting to help Rego’s stay in business.
Gravity ovens, Saul is convinced, are the only kind to use for smoking sturgeon – a fish that computer driven ovens have yet to tame. Sturgeon, according to Saul, “likes slower moving air than what the computer sends in” in high tech ovens.
Sturgeon cooks best with a human touch.
An expert smoker, who monitors temperature, airflow, and the cooking color, produces the finest and priciest sturgeon.
(In 2025, Zabar’s charges $75 for a pound of smoked sturgeon.)
Meeting Connie
As he has done for innumerable Wednesdays, Saul maneuvered his car from the Zabar’s garage on W. 80th, slipped past knots and snarls of honking traffic, crossed from the West Side to the East Side and over a few bridges, into Queens and pulled up to the curb at Rego’s.
The company is in a mixed business and residential neighborhood of small houses, many with post 9-11 American flags on display, some with Christmas decorations yet to be stored for next year.
We entered the one-story brick building through its unimposing glass door, nothing like the factory atmosphere of another Zabar’s supplier, the giant Acme Smoked Fish corporation in neighboring Brooklyn.
Conrad Spizz’s office is on the immediate right, a step or two in from the glass entry door. Conrad (or Connie to friends) sat at the far end of the narrow room, a walker on his left. He is partially recovered from a 1993 stroke. When I shook his hand, his other hand supported the one I grasped. Invoices littered his desk, an old Remington typewriter sat idle.
Connie let me know right away that he’s an opera buff; for 49 years he’s had three family subscriptions to the Met.
A few photographs, opera and movie posters interrupt the dingy walls. A large yellowing poster behind Connie, is a lively illustration of what looks like an operatic rendering of the musical, Kiss Me Kate.
He told us the story behind the poster. Connie’s speech was stroke impaired, but I got the idea.
This Kiss Me Kate, according to Connie, includes a considerable amount of sexual innuendo. Connie got a kick out of telling what must be a story many times re-told.
Saul told him (and me) he couldn’t understand Connie’s slurred speech.
No offense meant, just the way it was. Their relationship goes back decades. Saul would bring his kids along whenever he was buying fish and the kids would fold, as a pastime, hundreds of shipping boxes for Rego’s.
Connie’s ribald humor extends to interior decoration. The office light switch cover was a guy with the switch coming out of his pants. It was up.
Around the corner to the right from Connie’s office is a tiny retail store with one or two glass deli cases. It’s empty today.
Saul told me the cash income from this behind-the-scenes operation was never reported, instead, it was a source for paying the undocumented workers in the store.
The Feds and Connie didn’t see eye to eye. He stopped smoking chubb – a type of fish – when the inspectors insisted he use a higher temperature. The new temperature made chubb unpalatable.
“I’m smokin’, I’m happy!”
To the left, swinging double doors lead to the ovens. Saul and I headed there to taste the latest version of Rego’s smoked sturgeon.
In a dim light, two men (Mitchell Gardiner and an assistant, Leslie) stood near one of the operating ovens. Saul introduced us. “My great pleasure” said Mitchell, a verbal genuflection to Saul. Mitchell, a veteran fish smoker, is a new partner in Rego’s with hopes of once again supplying Zabar’s.
Mitchell has a life’s mantra: “I’m smokin’, I’m happy!”
He also likes to talk, a lot.
The ovens are tall, bricked up from the floor to just below the ceiling each with an arched roof, like pottery kilns. There are five black doors, only one with smoke seeping out. These are walk-in ovens. Unlit. A worker used a trouble light to see what was happening inside the oven. When I peered in I could see a series of sturgeon chunks hung from hooks on a series of crossbars, straddling the oven, a few inches below the curved ceiling.
There was a perceptible sizzling as the fish oil dripped onto a metal grill around the perimeter of the oven floor just visible in the shadows cast by the arc light.
Adding flavor and heat, buckets of charcoal were randomly placed inside the oven. Gravity was at work, the air redolent from the dripping juices splashing onto the metal grill. The rows of sturgeon chunks were turning a pale gold. The walls and grills are baked-on black, black from decades of smoke and oil.
Oven temperature matter. It’s best to start high to seal in juice, I was told, and then lower the heat to finish it without rendering the fish. If the temperature is too low at the start you’ll wind up with dry fish.
Getting down to business, Mitchell asked Saul how he liked the sturgeon from a shipment sent a couple days ago. “It’s OK”, something he says to people who have good stuff. Saul did want the tailpieces cut longer.
On another business point, Saul and the smoker concurred, “You can’t make money selling sturgeon”.
That was probably not just barter palaver. Sturgeon’s raw cost is high, permitting only a fractional retail mark-up – otherwise it becomes too expensive.
The smoker and Saul haggled over Rego’s price for smoked salmon, settling on $7.25. I couldn’t tell if Saul was pleased or not. (A month later Saul still was not satisfied with the taste of Rego’s salmon and had not placed an order.)
Leslie opened the oven’s door, shining a light on the glistening fish chunks. The final step in smoking makes use of a bushel basket of “excelsior”. That’s the word for the fine curled softwood shavings that add the desired golden color to the pellicle (the very exterior of the skin), like thin sunlight at dawn.
It’s important to use softwood, since it smolders, unlike hardwood that bursts into flame.
Mitchell was not happy with how his assistant had handled the excelsior fire and gave him pointers on how to do it right.
The assistant, with asbestos lined gloves, hauled out the cross bars laden with sturgeon, and hung each bar on a nearby cooling rack. Mitchell pulled off a large sturgeon chunk, still on its hook. We gladly accepted his offer and ate, wiping our fingers on paper towels, celebrating the golden fish, like ancients around a smoke fire savoring a heavenly gift.
Goodbye to Connie
Afterwards, on our way out to say good-bye to Connie, Saul gave me a tour of the unimposing retail store– there’s no one around. We were behind the deli case counter. Making himself at home, Saul opened a tray of herring and pulled out a piece in a white cream sauce. He sliced it on a piece of wax paper for us to share. I thanked him and told him it was fresher and had a milder flavor than I was used to.
Before we left, Connie wanted me to talk to his son; he was on the phone. He’d called the son, an alum of the university where I was working. The son and I reminisced, with Saul visibly impatient to go, about the campus and fund raising among the alumni. An interesting man, Connie.
Connie died in 2007 at age 89. His comprehensive obituary in the New York Times confirmed the iconic status of the man and his business.
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