18 Bay opens at former Dimon Estate in Jamesport

18 Bay is back, bigger and more ambitious than ever.

Three years ago, Adam Kopels and Elizabeth Ronzetti closed their celebrated Shelter Island restaurant and took on a consulting gig that entailed a lot of management but very little cooking. Now they are back in the kitchen and their new venue dwarfs anything they've done before: It's the old Dimon Estate in Jamesport, a stately property that sprawls over almost 4 acres, encompassing a patio, an orchard, an herb garden and a vegetable garden that, at 6,000 square feet, is more of a small farm. (A full-time gardener was part of the deal.)

First in Bayville (2005-10) and then on Shelter Island (2011-22), 18 Bay racked up laurels — Newsday’s Top 100 list, semifinalists for the James Beard Award — that rested on their commitment to double-handedly doing all their own shopping and cooking. The eatery was literally farm-to-table: Leaving home on the North Fork in the morning, they would swing by farms and Southold Fish Market on their way to the ferry in Greenport. Once they reached the restaurant, they would work companionably in the kitchen, with Kopels butchering fish and meat and prepping vegetables, Ronzetti rolling out and filling the day’s homemade pasta.

"We’ve always been the ones on the line," Kopels said. "We never even had a real sous chef."

After 17 years, the couple needed a break. But three years of supervising and hiring made them realize how much they missed getting their hands dirty. Looking for a property on the North Fork, they came upon the historic Jamesport property that had operated for decades as The Jamesport Manor Inn, and, from 2022 until last year, as The Dimon Estate.

The first iteration of 18 Bay (at 18A Bay Ave. in Bayville) had 16 seats. On Shelter Island they could seat about 45 inside (plus more on the porch). In Jamesport, their office is the size of their first kitchen. There are 80 seats inside, a separate bar and a second floor that is, as yet, unspoken for. 

As at their two previous locations, they offer a four-course, fixed-price, Italian-accented tasting menu ($145) that changes weekly according to the season and comprises a quartet of antipasti, a homemade pasta, an entree (your choice of fish or meat) and one of Ronzetti’s simple desserts. The opening menu's antipasti quartet comprises fluke crudo with apple batons, horseradish and crème fraîche, radicchio salad with blood-orange vinaigrette, fried blowfish with chili-mint sauce and grilled quail with poached quince. Then comes spaghetti alla chitarra with littleneck clams and green tomatoes, roasted striped bass with "three sisters" (corn, beans and squash) or New York strip steak with chard in creamed parsnip. Finish up with a warm apple cobbler with vanilla gelato. 

But, with a much bigger venue, Kopels said, "we want to accommodate a much broader crowd." For the first time, 18 Bay has added an a la carte menu with five starters (among them, olive-oil-poached tuna with peperonata, $22, lamb polpettini with snack-bar onions and cucumber salad, $22), three pastas (like spinach fettuccine with oysters, guanciale and breadcrumbs, $32) and five mains (chicken al mattone with braised escarole, $30, crispy blackfish with spaghetti squash, $38, seafood stew, $46).  

On the beverage front, they have brought aboard Chris Cardone, an award-winning mixologist and four-time national "flair bartending" finalist who recently worked at i Sodi in Manhattan. He's put together a thoughtful cocktail menu and, with the chefs, a mostly Italian list of lesser-known (and value-priced) wines. 

Partly because four courses took a while to consume and partly because most guests had to take a ferry to get there, 18 Bay meals demanded a certain level of commitment. Now that they are on the mainland, Kopels said, "We want to be like an old-style tavern where you can come any day for a drink, or for a plate of pasta and a glass of wine."

18 Bay, 370 Manor Lane, Jamesport, 631-809-3542, 18bayrestaurant.com. Open Monday and Thursday to Saturday 5 to 10 p.m., Sunday 4 to 9 p.m., closed Tuesday and Wednesday.