SEBASTIAN — When a steady stream of local day-fishing boats pull up to the dock at the fish market to bring in the morning’s catch, it doesn’t get much fresher than Crab-E Bill’s Indian River Seafood in the old Hurricane Harbor building at Fisherman’s Landing.
Six days a week – he’s closed on Mondays – Bill Tiedge and his loyal customers who come from as far away as Tampa and West Palm Beach create a much-needed demand for fresh local seafood from the area’s day-fishing boat captains and crews. Small deliveries of fish arrive throughout the day as fishing boats from Cape Canaveral to Palm Beach sail in and weigh in.
Then at night, several nights a week, owner Tiedge and his dive crews take to the seas to go spear fishing and lobster diving to replenish the cases. The stock doesn’t only change every day, it changes by the minute as fresh fish is cleaned and cut into steaks or fillets and displayed.
The selection changes every day depending upon what’s biting in the local waters, but in general there’s usually mahi, trigger fish, grouper, mangrove snapper, kingfish, amberjack, swordfish, gigantic shrimp, spiny Florida lobster, clams and several other kinds of fish in season in the cases. There’s also a tank of Maine lobster and the market offers live blue crab caught in the Indian River Lagoon and stone crab in season, which by the way, starts Oct. 15.
Tiedge’s personal favorite is something Crab-E Bill’s specializes in called pumpkin grouper.
“Pumpkin grouper feeds off of a royal red shrimp and it changes the whole flavor of the fish,” Tiedge said.
Customers rave about the quality and variety, which Tiedge said is unmatched around these parts. A butcher by trade, Tiedge learned the seafood business from the ground up, growing up in the North Miami Beach area and working at Joe’s Stone Crab as a teenager. After learning the butchering trade at Lorenzo’s Market in Miami Beach, Tiedge later worked for Fresh Market opening stores and then coordinated the meat, seafood and poultry departments in 15 in the Southeast region for meat, seafood and poultry for the Whole Foods Market company.
“I was with Whole Foods for 16 years, we all were with Whole Foods. My wife Suzy was there 30 years and my daughter Melissa was with Whole Foods for 10 years,” Tiedge said.
Customers can often find prices at Crab-E Bill’s that are about half what they’d pay at other markets, but at a chain store, Tiedge said, most everything comes from out of the country because it’s cheaper to buy frozen seafood from China or South America than from a local vendor. There’s no guarantee that one dime of the price for the fish ever gets into the pockets of a local fisherman, however.
“All our fish are day-boat fish, caught that same day,” he said. “None of them are from long lines. Those boats sometimes stay out for two or three weeks. We also don’t buy shrimp that’s frozen or that comes in already cooked. Our shrimp comes in fresh and we cook it.”
Though it’s tough to beat the quality and the value, the atmosphere at Crab-E Bill’s in the Fisherman’s Landing complex on Sebastian’s working waterfront is nearly as enticing as the seafood itself. Though the place has only been open about a year, it has the feel of a neighborhood fish market where generations might have shopped for dinner in years gone by. The beam ceilings and wood floors give the place a rustic feel, but the clean, white surfaces also hint of a high-end butcher shop.
Alongside the seafood cases are tasty treats for the land-lubber, including all-natural pork, certified Angus beef from Kansas City, Amish chicken straight from Pennsylvania that was raised without chemicals, steroids, hormones or antibiotics. Tiedge and Carmine Leonetti behind the counter make sausage from scratch. They also brew up the cooking stock sold in the cold case and smoke the fish for the gourmet fish dips made fresh on site.
Suzy Tiedge said first-time customers are often led to the shop after eating Crab-E Bill’s fish at a friend’s house and asking where it came from.
“They just pretty much say that they’ve never had fresh fish like that before,” she said.
“The local fishermen even buy their fish from us,” Tiedge said.
Crab-E Bill’s just celebrated one year of business in the Fisherman’s Landing complex and Tiedge has some exciting things he wants to do going forward. He plans to expand his offering of live blue crabs sometime this fall with a new tank system and he’s made a pitch to the building’s owners, the City of Sebastian, to start serving limited meals this fall. It wouldn’t be fancy, just some fresh seafood prepared simply and served through a window on a tray with no table service. Tiedge said he’s got a limited menu in mind, only about 20 items, focusing on the same locally caught, fresh seafood and the all-natural meats and poultry he sells in the shop. The plan is set to go before the Sebastian City Council on Sept. 26 and, if all goes well, the restaurant should open by November.
The whole community, especially the local businesses in the riverfront district, have embraced the concept of the working waterfront and of the traditional fresh fish market, Tiedge said. He said the Sebastian City Council and even the city staff who have worked on the public-private partnership of Fisherman’s Landing support the shop as customers as well as with the city’s cooperation to make the place a success.
Sebastian City Manager Al Minner is one of those who regularly lines up to take home some seafood for dinner.
“I think it’s a really neat place, and the facility itself has so much history, being built in the 1920s and previously being Hurricane Harbor, it’s a big part of Sebastian’s fishing heritage,” he said. “It’s great to have a working fish market right there in our downtown in the middle of the riverfront district.”
“Crab-E Bill’s is a classic example of what redevelopment dollars are supposed to do,” Minner said.
Crab-E Bill’s Indian River Seafood is located in the old Hurricane Harbor building at 1540 Indian River Drive, Sebastian. The store is closed for vacation until Tuesday. After that, store hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays, closed on Mondays. Sign up in the store for weekly specials by email.
For more information, call (772) 388-2727