At King Caviar Farms in Swedesboro, Septimiu Pastiu is working hard to bring a thriving caviar industry back to South Jersey—an area that was once known as the Caviar Capital of the World

When Septimiu Pastiu first tried caviar from a Russian market in Philadelphia, he was gravely disappointed. At the ripe age of 39, he’d never tried the delicacy, but having grown up in Romania, he’d heard tales of the rich and famous living by the Danube and eating caviar at dinner parties. He imagined it would delight his taste buds, “but this was not good,” he says. “I knew from descriptions I heard that it should taste better.” When Pastiu finally tried caviar on a trip to Germany, at a sturgeon fish farm, he knew it was what the exquisite treat should taste like. “It was nutty, truffle-like, relatively firm—and I knew I wanted this back home.”

Thus began his personal journey to perfect his own caviar in an area where a once-thriving caviar industry no longer existed. Already a successful dentist (he immigrated to South Jersey at 22 to work as an apprentice, ultimately earning his own dentistry degree), he now embarked on a midlife hobby that would eventually blossom into a parallel career.

“In 2017, I bought and shipped a couple of sturgeons from Germany,” Pastiu shares, referring to the fish widely regarded as the gold standard for caviar. “I raised them in the basement—but they became too big for the basement, so I moved them to the garage, [and then ultimately] to the backyard. At one point,” he marvels, “I had over 800 sturgeon in and around my home.” Looking to expand further, he ultimately settled on a property in Swedesboro on the site of a former garden nursery.

The land possessed several vital characteristics. “When I looked at the property, it had five water wells already, which are very expensive to install,” Pastiu says. “For other people this wouldn’t be important, but for me it was an asset.” He continues that the 8.75-acre property sits on the Kirkwood-Cohansey Aquifer (a vast body of underground water-bearing rock) where “the wells tap directly into [it] and provide high-quality water for the fish.” In fact, according to Save the Source, a campaign started by the New Jersey Pinelands Preservation Alliance to protect the Kirkwood-Cohansey Aquifer, this specific aquifer is vast and contains 17 trillion gallons of fresh water—perfect conditions, Pastiu realized, to draw upon for his fish.

Where Caviar Was King

As coincidence would have it, King Caviar Farms happens to be just a stone’s throw from the area that, from 1860–1925, was known as the “Caviar Capital of the World.” To help tell this incredible story, Russ Prichard was brought on to the King Caviar team as a content writer. A bit of a history buff when it comes to caviar and New Jersey, Prichard says, “In the late 1800s, after the Civil War, a lot of the returning Union veterans came back to South Jersey and Philadelphia looking for work. Of course, fishing in the Delaware River was a big industry.” The river was especially plentiful with big Atlantic sturgeon, he elaborates, “and in 1873, a German immigrant by the name of Henry Schacht formed the first caviar company in America.”

Henry Schacht’s caviar operation was based in Penns Grove, but harvesting, canning, and shipping pulled in much of Cumberland, Salem, and Gloucester counties. “The caviar was shipped from Jersey to New York, then to Russia, where it was private-labeled, and shipped back to the United States and sold as ‘Russian caviar,’” Prichard says. At that time, the South Jersey industry produced 90 percent of the world’s caviar, and the area now known as Bayside Tract in Greenwich Township was even called Caviar, New Jesey.

But it was not meant to last. “By the early 1920s,” Prichard adds, “the New Jersey caviar business basically collapsed. The Atlantic sturgeon population in the Delaware River had been decimated from overfishing and pollutants from factories that sprang up during the Industrial Revolution.”

This history weighed heavily on Pastiu’s mind as he constructed King Caviar Farms. “Sadly, the Atlantic sturgeon are near extinction,” he says. “With pollutants, their caviar is no longer feasible. They are better left alone in the world.” Instead, Pastiu and Prichard note that all the fish on the farm are “pedigreed European sturgeon, from lineage, native to the Caspian Sea and Volga River, as well as the Black Sea and Danube River, which have produced caviar for European royalty for centuries.”

Pastiu hired a consultant from Germany to learn how to create an eco-friendly caviar farm. He created a “fully sustainable, controlled environment, with no impact on the ecosystem” called RAS–Recirculating Aquaculture System. “The water is reused after filtration,” he says. In contrast to industries like cage salmon farming, which Pastiu states “use routine antibiotics and pesticides,” he’s proud that his farm has low carbon emissions, no antibiotics, and no antiseptics.

Harvesting a Farm-to-Table Product

Eight years after importing his first sturgeon from Germany, Pastiu says this past year was a milestone: “In March 2025 we had our first harvest, because sturgeon must be at least seven years old for their eggs to fully develop. But now that there are so many mature fish we can keep going.” Today, King Caviar Farms is home to over 30,000 sturgeon distributed across nine basins and a large pond.

King Caviar Farms sells exclusive Ossetra caviar from Russian sturgeon, along with Beluga hybrid caviar from Bester sturgeon (a hybrid of Beluga and Sterlet sturgeon). He sells to customers online and even to patients at his dental practice. In general, he finds wholesale too costly but does sell to some Cape May restaurants like the Washington Inn & Wine Bar, Peter Shields Inn & Restaurant, and Port Marina and Restaurant.

Pastiu also feels that keeping his business small helps ensure that customers have a true farm-to-table experience. “We ship to the ‘lower 48’ states overnight to your door,” he says. “We want it to be extremely fresh.”

Prichard touts the fine quality that quick turnover affords. “Caviar from Europe, China, Iran contains borax as a preservative—the same borax that is in laundry detergent. All we use is 2.7 percent salt.” This allows for customers to purely enjoy caviar’s nutritional benefits as a superfood that’s “high in protein and rich in antioxidants.”

Pastiu still works as a dentist while maintaining the caviar business. “The hardest part was building this,” he says. “Now I know what to do. I don’t have to give up dentistry.” It’s also been a bonding experience with his family. His wife and mother help, and Pastiu is very excited that his 17-year-old daughter, Anamaria, “wants to take over when she’s finished with school.”

Pastiu hopes to continue growing his customer base. “Once they buy from us, they keep coming back,” especially for special occasions.

When asked how best to enjoy the delicacy, he acknowledges that some people like to eat it with a cracker and add a light spread. “My wife likes it with a potato chip, and I won’t take that away from her. But me personally, I just dig in with a spoon, just by itself, enjoying the taste on my taste buds, and I won’t put anything else in my mouth for at least a half an hour!”

KING CAVIAR FARMS
856.340.9728
kingcaviarfarms.com