Top chefs ‘flock together’ for Crescent Duck Farm fundraiser to support laid-off workers

Top chefs from across the island are coming together for a one-night fundraiser to benefit Crescent Duck Farm workers.

“Flock Together: A Culinary Tribute to Crescent Duck Farm” will take place Feb. 28 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Tellers Next Door, 599 Main Street in Islip.

The event will feature nine top chefs at chef-led food stations, local cocktails and wines, an auction, and donation opportunities – all with proceeds dedicated going directly to Cresent’s displaced workers.

Crescent Duck Farm in Aquebogue, owned and operated by the Corwin family since 1908, is Long Island’s last commercial duck farm. A confirmed bird flu outbreak last month forced it to immediately cease operations and cull its entire flock of Pekin ducks, nearly 100,000 birds. It has had to lay off nearly all of its work force, numbering some 75 people.

Crescent is renowned for its ducks, developed over decades of careful breeding to produce “a meatier bird that has enough skin fat to make it really, really succulent when you cook it, without making it overly fatty,” Crescent Duck Farm President and fourth-generation duck farmer Doug Corwin said.  For that reason, it’s the duck of choice among the “white-tablecloth trade” to which Crescent caters, he said. That selective breeding is “what’s kept us in business,” Corwin said.

“For years, Crescent has supplied some of the best local ingredients to our restaurants,” Chef Francis Derby of Shands General in Patchogue, said. Derby is one of “Flock Together” event’s organizers. 

“Now, it’s our turn to give back and help support their workers; eventually bring them back to life,” Derby said.

Derby is the grandson of Lou Gallo, who owned the Gallo Duck Farm that left the industry in about 1987, Corwin said in an email this morning.  

“He has cooked and run many amazing restaurants in his chef career,” Corwin said.   “He came to me with the idea, and pulled together the Chef community,” he said.

“We are overwhelmed with the support and kindness that the local and Long Island community have given us during this tragedy,” Corwin said.  “I can’t thank people like Francis Derby and all that have volunteered to help him enough, as the proceeds of this event will go directly to those that we unfortunately had to lay off.”

The line-up of “Crescent Collective” top chefs at the Feb. 28 event: 

• Francis Derby – Shands General
• Ben Hoffman – Prime: An American Kitchen & Bar
• Christian Mir – Stone Creek Inn
• Steve Gallagher – The Trattoria
• Armond Joseph – Léon 1909
• Ryan Hardy – Delicious Hospitality Group
• Steve Rizzo – Off the Block Meats
• Berenice de Araujo – North Fork Table & Inn (John Fraser Restaurants)
• Keenan Boyle – Tall Mutha Shucka
• Drinks donated by: Montauk Brewing Co, Wölffer Estate Vineyard, The Better Man Distilling Co

Tickets are $150 per person available online via Eventbrite: https://flocktogether25.eventbrite.com (Total ticket price, including fee is $161.90.)

Supporters can also donate directly via GoFundMe here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/flocktogether25 

“Hosting these incredible chefs at Tellers Next Door to support those in need from an industry that helps define the Long Island culinary experience is both a privilege and an honor,”  said Michael Bohlsen, who with his brother Kurt owns and operates Tellers: An American Chophouse. The restaurant is part of the Bohlsen Restaurant Group. 

“We say this all the time, but it’s especially true here: We get in this business and have visions of what we want to do, and, the best thing we can do is all work together to give back as much as we can,” Kurt Bohlsen said.

Local breweries and businesses in and around Riverhead held a fundraiser Feb. 1 at North Fork Brewing Company and raised over $18,000 for Crescent Duck Farm workers.