NEW YORK — Often referred to as the city you pass through on your way to the Hamptons or North Fork, but now a Long Island community is celebrating after their home was named on a list that also includes the Azores, Curaçao and French Polynesia.
Even for Riverhead residents, being named”Best places to travelby Forbes came as a surprise, to say the least.
“Oh my gosh, it’s unbelievable. My family has been here since the 1920s, they finally found us,” said restaurant owner Anthony Meras, whose family has run a restaurant on Main Street for decades.
Meras loves the city, but was surprised to see it on the list of 50 that features such exotic places.
The magazine refers to the Suffolk County location as a “historic town on the North Shore.” He mentions the Long Island Aquarium (which boasts one of the world’s largest living coral reef exhibits), the supposedly famous 20-foot-tall “Big Duck,” and the Jamesport Farm Brewery, which was quite a surprise and delight to the brewery owners.
“I was surprised to see that our names were up there, it was wonderful,” said Melissa Caggiano, who runs the Jamesport Farm Brewery with her partner, Anthony.
The brewery has craft beers, a food truck, and live music in the summer. Come fall, they attract thousands of visitors, but they were still stunned to be named in the magazine.
“When you talk around the world, yeah, it’s a cool place to be, Riverhead and the east end of Long Island. But to be on the world stage was pretty shocking,” Anthony Caggiano said.
The city has been going through a renaissance over the years, with its downtown revitalized and many farms and wineries drawing crowds.
“It’s a big city, the last developing city in the far east. So they finally found us, I can’t believe it,” Meras said. “And Forbes, too: I knew it was a Fortune 500 company.”
The magazine doesn’t detail how the locations were selected, but Forbes also highlighted the apple and pumpkin picking Riverhead has to offer in the fall, plus the abundance of hotels in the area.
