Sebastian seafood lovers have a new dining option this summer in a venue with a long history.
This spring, Crab E Bill’s, the popular waterfront fish market, opened an “eatery” in the in the back section of the historic building that long housed the restaurant Hurricane Harbor.
Market and restaurant manager Carmine Leonetti says the distinction between a restaurant and eatery comes down mainly to the fact that Crab-E-Bill’s offers only counter service instead of having a wait staff.
The market and eatery, owned by fishmonger Bill Tiedge, are part of the Sebastian Working Waterfront project, a plan being pursued by the city, state and local businesses to commemorate and continue Sebastian’s history as a fishing village, and some regulation arising from that plan mandates the eatery not have waiters or waitresses.
“It has been going great, so far,” says Leonetti. “We have the freshest local seafood as the pinnacle of our menu and we have been getting some good feedback. All our fish is day-boat stuff, locally line-caught or speared and served the same day.”
When my wife and I arrived around 5 p.m. on a recent weeknight, a friendly, helpful young woman named Heather was behind the counter. She answered our questions about the menu and took our orders promptly.
Self-seating is at tables in a room overlooking the Indian River Lagoon that will one day house a Sebastian history museum focused on the waterfront as well as restaurant seating.
It is as fine a setting for a seafood meal as you will find and the food lived up to the venue.
We started with two versions of the soup of the day. I had a delicious clam chowder ($3), while my wife had a spicy red conch bisque that was exceptionally good ($3).
I chose grilled mangrove snapper with homemade potato chips and cole slaw for my entrée ($16), while my wife had fish and chips ($15). Both meals were excellent. In fact, the snapper was one of the tastiest pieces of fish I have eaten in three years of Florida waterfront dining.
Crab-E-Bill’s fish market, which Leonetti says opened in Sebastian approximately 10 years ago and moved to its current location three years ago, closes at 6 p.m. most days and the eatery closes at the same hour – for the time being.
“We plan to have later hours in the future, once we are confident everything is running smoothly and we build up enough of a staff,” Leonetti says.
Judging by the crowd the night we were there, the eatery would do well later in the evening. A steady stream of people arrived after we were seated, filling up most of the seats in the waterfront room.
As it progresses, the Working Waterfront project will likely bring more interest and increased traffic to the area.
Leonetti says docks adjacent to Crab-E-Bill’s will be renovated and restored to operation as a place where local fishermen can bring in their catch or loads of farmed clams for processing and distribution.
“We are in a perfect location to take advantage of that and provide people with the freshest local fish they can get anywhere,” Leonetti says.
“They’ve kept the project moving forward,” former Sebastian City Manager Al Minner said of Crab-E Bill’s last year, adding that the company has been an “important player” in the working waterfront venture.
Tiedge notes that the methods used by Crab-E-Bill’s suppliers are eco-friendly and help contribute to sustainable fisheries. The fish are all caught in the ocean outside the Sebastian Inlet with hook and line or taken by spear fishermen. Because the fishermen target select species and take the fish one by one, there is none of the careless destruction of fish populations that occurs with net fishing, when large numbers of unneeded fish are caught along with commercially desirable species.
Marine mammals also fall prey to large-scale commercial fishing operations that employ drift nets, gill nets and long lines. Thousands of bottlenose dolphins, sea turtles and even whales have been entangled and killed in commercial fishing gear according to the Humane Society, so it is nice to know the fish you eat at Crab-E-Bill’s has been taken in ways that avoid that kind of collateral damage to the environment.
“We are all about freshness and sustainability,” Tiedge says.
