When happy hour in America meant a cheap beer … and free caviar?
In the 19th century, this lost American boomtown shipped 15 train cars of sturgeon roe daily. Here's the surprising story of how a bar snack became black gold.
The rituals of European caviar service have changed little over centuries: mother-of-pearl spoons, champagne pairings, and precise instructions for savoring each briny pearl. Yet, while Europe maintains these traditions, scroll through TikTok today, and you'll find Americans creating their own traditions—most notably, taking “caviar bumps,” small portions of fish roe eaten off the back of the hand.
This irreverent approach to luxury isn't new. In fact, America was once the caviar capital of the world, and, in its heyday, treated sturgeon roe with even less ceremony than a bowl of bar nuts.
In the 1880s, New York bartenders couldn't give caviar away fast enough, according to Caviar: The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World's Most Coveted Delicacy by Inga Saffron. They would pile fresh sturgeon eggs onto free bar sandwiches, hoping the salty snack would make patrons thirstier—the same approach bars use today when serving peanuts.
This caviar wasn't imported. Less than 150 miles south of Manhattan, a boomtown called Caviar emerged in the 1860s along the Delaware River. Though you won't find it on any modern map, this forgotten southern New Jersey settlement—complete with its own store, post office, and rail line—became the unlikely center of a global trade route.
(How Oklahoma cornered the market in … caviar.)
A boomtown is born
It all started with one man's gamble. In 1852, German immigrant Bendix Blohm arrived in America with dreams of selling pickled sturgeon back to Germany, where it was in high demand, though not yet considered a luxury item. After years of struggling to make a living in New York's Hudson River, he moved his operation south to the Delaware River, where sturgeon were so abundant that steamboat passengers had to dodge leaping fish nose-bombing their decks.
Knowing nothing about harvesting caviar, Blohm invited German experts from New York to teach him the process. By 1870, they were shipping barrels of American caviar to Hamburg.
The town of Caviar quickly grew. Its population swelled from a few dozen to 400 people during fishing season, with fishermen living in dormitories ready to jump into their boats at the tide's command. From the docks, where nets dried like hammocks in the sun, you could see fleets of fishing skiffs with snow-white sails bringing in the day's catch of giant sturgeon.
Every day in the town of Caviar, 15 train cars packed with sturgeon roe left the town's docks for New York harbor, where steamships carried the precious cargo to eager buyers in Hamburg. By 1895, "twenty-two caviar and sturgeon wholesalers operated from this tiny settlement," writes Saffron in Caviar.
"The infrastructure of preservation and transportation materially enabled caviar's transformation into a luxury commodity," says Donovan Conley, associate professor focusing on food culture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Ice houses kept the delicate roe fresh both on land and on steamboats, while the newly expanded rail system meant caviar could reach the port within hours of being packed, ensuring it was still fresh when loaded onto steamships bound for Europe.
German immigrants like Blohm created a bridge between American abundance and European tastes through new preservation techniques that included salting the caviar heavily or pressing it into a dry cake, as well wrapping it in ice and straw before shipping on steamboats.
From bar snack to black gold
While Caviar shipped its precious cargo to Europe, American bartenders—who acquired caviar from all across the U.S.—couldn't give it away fast enough. "[Caviar's] 'free' status in bars was less about perceived value and more about the realities of the sheer abundance of sturgeon," says Conley.
The contrast between local and European perceptions was stark. By 1885, German dealers were paying just $9 for a 135-pound keg of caviar from the town of Caviar, the equivalent of a little over $300 today. That same keg would command $100 just 15 years later—about $3,900 today. "Perceptions of what 'counts' as a luxury food certainly change over time," says Emily Contois, assistant professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa and author of Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture. The transformation of lobster "from an everyday regional dish into a luxury ingredient with a price tag to match" is just one example.
Sturgeon roe’s Indigenous history along the Delaware River
European royalty, who paid top dollar for this luxury import, never suspected their prized delicacy was being treated as a humble bar snack back in America—a fact that would have seemed especially ironic given the Delaware River’s history.
These same Delaware waters had sustained Indigenous communities for generations. Every spring, the Lenni Lenape would hunt sturgeon in waters so abundant that today's fishermen would hardly believe it. But where they saw sustenance, European settlers saw only "strong, oily" meat, Saffron mentions in Caviar, fit only for the poor and enslaved people, while the eggs were fed to livestock.
It wasn’t until Blohm and his team spotted caviar’s opportunity that they bridged this cultural disconnect. "The Delaware River boom happened precisely when imperial trade networks were reaching their peak sophistication," says Conley.
But even as Caviar rode high on its success, trouble was brewing beneath the surface. Sturgeon populations, once thought inexhaustible, showed signs of strain under the relentless pressure of round-the-clock fishing. By 1900, overfishing had devastated sturgeon populations. Fishermen's nets that once hauled in dozens of fish now came up empty. It was a boom that couldn't last forever, and as the sturgeon vanished, so did the town.
(How overfishing threatens the world's oceans—and why it could end in catastrophe.)
Caviar culture today
Today, if you visit the site of Caviar—now Bayside, New Jersey—you'll find only marshland where ice houses and processing sheds once stood. The town's rail line is buried under asphalt, and the docks—where snow-white sails once dotted the horizon—have long since rotted away. Like the Gold Rush out West, the Caviar Rush was short and intense.
But caviar's transformation continues. "It seems that caviar is quickly evolving from an ultra-premium specialty product available only to a tiny elite niche group to a much broader coalition of American consumers," says Becca Millstein, CEO of tinned seafood company Fishwife.
More than a century later, history seems to repeat itself—with a social media twist. "TikTok videos that transgress these 'food rules' make caviar more broadly accessible," Contois says. "Everyday users can forge new ways of consuming 'luxury' foods and reconfiguring their cultural meaning."
On TikTok, you'll find millions watching as people debate the use of traditional mother-of-pearl spoons versus plastic alternatives or pair caviar with everything from potato chips to ice cream. Like the German immigrants who once made caviar approachable through new preservation techniques, these social media creators are breaking down old rules about how luxury foods should be enjoyed, and a new generation is rediscovering this delicacy.
"[Consumers] might not take a vacation to Europe," Millstein says, "but maybe they will splurge on a jar of caviar to enjoy with friends."
But unlike the original Caviar Rush, which stripped the Delaware of sturgeon to near extinction levels, today's caviar renaissance comes with a conscience. Modern producers raise their fish on carefully controlled aquaculture farms instead of depleting wild populations. Millstein predicts that as people "continue to gain more awareness about sourcing [and] food systems," the willingness to spend on premium, ethically sourced goods will increase.
(What is aquaculture? It may be the solution to overfishing.)
As sturgeon slowly return to Eastern waters and caviar finds new life on social media, perhaps America's forgotten caviar capital is getting a second chance—one TikTok at a time.
