Shelter Island Reporter Photo Quiz: What is that? Dec. 12, 2025

If you know, let us know. Send your responses to [email protected] or phone 631-275-1859. 

Roger McKeon emailed us as soon as he got his paper to identify last week’s photo (see below): “Commander Cody’s sign-board.” You are correct, sir.

Carleen Washington and Cynthia Michalak nailed it on Facebook, with Cynthia weighing in with, “Jimmy Hayward,” naming the owner of the venerable Smith Street eatery. Kathryn O’Hagan, also on Facebook, just wrote, “The Commander!” and that’s all any Islander needs to recognize the place for delicious fried chicken, ribs and fish.

As our Charity Robey has written, “Mr. Hayward began fishing our waters in the 1950s. The oldest of 10 children growing up in South Carolina, he came to Shelter Island for seasonal farm work. ‘But he told me,’ Ms. Robey wrote, ‘I’ve never been unemployed one day since I lived here, because I like to go on the water and go fishing.’ He started in the days when scallops were harvested using small sailboats, saying, ‘We used to dig mussels out in Gardiner’s Bay. Big ones. Whenever we got them, we ate them.’ Throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s he fished for clams and mussels, worked lobster pots and dredged for scallops, selling fish off the back of his truck, just as many fishermen at the time sold fish directly to customers, and just as Sawyer Clark sells part of his catch today. In 1984, Mr. Hayward built the house that is now his home and business and started selling his catch there.” 

It wasn’t long before he began cooking his catch along with chicken in the scrumptious southern style.