WHO WE ARE AND WHO WE AREN'T

King Caviar Farms is a fully sustainable fish farm located in southern New Jersey on the Kirkwood-Cohansey Aquifer. We produce caviar from the finest European pedigreed sturgeon and deliver to restaurants and homes nationwide with a true farm-to-table fresh experience. 

We are not importers, and we do not use preservatives. Our caviar does not contain Borax. King Caviar is harvested and packaged on our farm and shipped out directly to our customers. We sell caviar and only caviar. 

We are not the guys with the fancy gilt embossed boxes and the AI generated imagery. We don’t have a fancy website with lots of pop-ups. 

We do have the freshest and best tasting caviar in the United States. Great caviar sells itself, and word of mouth recommendation is the greatest compliment.

Dr. Septimiu Pastiu started King Caviar Farms as a hobby almost a decade ago with a desire to create a source of fresh and preservative free caviar.

 Friends and neighbors raved over the exquisite taste of his caviar, and his hobby blossomed. That passion has grown to nine basins and a large pond supporting more than 30,000 pedigreed European sturgeon on eight acres in Swedesboro, New Jersey. 

Managed by three generations of the Pastiu family, the highly optimized, nutritionally dense sturgeon food is imported from Germany, and salt is imported from France to produce the finest and freshest caviar in the United States.

In the years after the American Civil War, returning veterans made a living fishing the Delaware River which separates New Jersey from parts of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Atlantic sturgeon, a great source for caviar, grew to almost twenty feet in length and were plentiful. Caviar was prized in Europe, and in 1873, Henry Schacht formed Schacht and Company in Cumberland County, New Jersey which took caviar from the sturgeon in the Delaware River and shipped it north to New York where it was exported to various parts of Europe – then repackaged and shipped back to the United States as “Russian Caviar.” 

At its peak, this hub of Cumberland County became known as Caviar, New Jersey and for several decades, New Jersey was regarded as the caviar capital of the world. Hundreds of fishermen made a living catching sturgeon and selling it to the several dozen wholesalers who set up businesses in Caviar, New Jersey. On average, twelve to fifteen rail cars transported caviar north every day for export.

By the early 1920’s, the Atlantic Sturgeon population in the Delaware River had been decimated from overfishing and pollutants from factories which sprung up during the Industrial Revolution. The caviar businesses folded one by one, and eventually, the town of Caviar was absorbed into Bayside, New Jersey. 

King Caviar Farms is a short distance from the region of New Jersey which, at one time, produced 90% of the world’s caviar. Steeped in history, King Caviar Farms is a fully sustainable and environmentally controlled fish farm producing the finest and freshest caviar, free of preservatives, in a true farm-to-table fresh experience.