The Coast is Clear
The fishing village of Cortez and surrounding islands at the mouth of Tampa Bay have survived red tides, strict regulations and an oil spill that threatened to shut them down for good — but their seafood is as abundant, safe and tasty as ever.
Freshly prepared Florribbean grouper at Beach Bistro
© PETER KOCH
FIVE MILLION BARRELS. The amount of oil that gushed from BP’s well between April 20 and Aug. 2 was astound ing, whether you were halfway around the world or lived on the Gulf Coast in a small Florida fishing village.
Indeed, although the oil was far away, those in Cortez — one of the last working fishermen communities on Florida’s southwest coast — and on Anna Maria Island, Longboat Key and other islands just south of Tampa Bay couldn’t help but be afraid. “Gradually, as it was clear there wasn’t going to be a fast way to [clean up the oil] and we didn’t know the currents and how it would affect the seafood business, it became a little more apparent that we could all be in trouble,” says Anthony Manali, a fisherman who’s caught mullet around Anna Maria Island for nearly 40 years. “Cortez livelihoods are entwined in fishing. When you take that away, these people have no way of making money.”
The fishermen and business owners on the tourist-heavy islands braced themselves, counting down the days until their waters would become brown and slippery. Except it never happened.
That’s not to say the people of Cortez are strangers to hardship. Since the village was founded in the late 1800s by a group of families drawn from North Carolina by the promise of net-breaking catches, the Cortesians, as they’re called, have held on through pestilent red tides and ever stricter fishing regulations.
But this time, it wasn’t an actual catas trophe they had to deal with — it was the fear caused by one. Somehow, the area’s business owners and tourism officials had to convince visitors that there was nothing to worry about. So the fishermen kept fishing and the chefs kept cooking.
Raymond Arpke is one such chef. He jauntily commands the kitchen of Euphemia Haye Restaurant on Longboat Key, reaching around his pans and flipping Klondike bar-sized chunks of butter into bowls. “The only thing that has changed is people’s perceptions,” he says when asked about life since the oil spill. Today, Arpke is perfecting a simple dish of steamed snapper, white rice and asparagus. He wants to highlight the flaky texture of the fish, leaving the skin on to keep more flavor and oil inside the meat. “My seafood focuses on grouper and snapper, and I still get everything I need straight out of the Gulf,” he says.
Much of his product is caught by fishermen across Sarasota Bay, such as Manali, who was just 13 years old when he manned his first boat. A soft-spoken, round-faced gentleman with glasses, he appears the exact opposite of the salty-sailor stereotype. Although he’s felt little impact from the oil spill (he does express a concern that “all it would take to make a big difference would be one scientist making an offhand comment,” however), he’s been forced to expand his business because of stricter regulations, starting with a net ban in 1994. He supple ments what he makes from fresh-caught mullet, stone crabs, grouper and snapper by offering offshore charter service. “I’ve had to become flexible now,” he says. “I even take out CEOs on their new yachts to show them how to fish.”
Manali sells some of his catch to the A.P. Bell Fish Company, a wholesale sup plier founded in the 1940s that sits along the working waterfront of Cortez in north Sarasota Bay. Commercial boats cruise by all day, mullet splash in the shallow water, and white egrets stand by for scraps. A.P. Bell supplies 20 local captains with boats and supplies, while the captains pick and manage their crews. Together, they produce more than 1 million pounds of fish each year.
Karen Bell, a descendant of one of the original founding families, is the owner of the Star Fish Company Market & Restau rant, which sits adjacent to the warehouse. She opened the small restaurant — which serves freshly caught fish, simply prepared and served in white paper boxes, on a back porch with picnic tables sitting right on the docks — in 1998. “I knew there was a place for a small, dockside restaurant where people could enjoy the view, see the bustle of the fishing industry and enjoy quality seafood at a reasonable price,” she says. “I want people to appreciate what the commercial fisher men do for them — to see the boats that actually harvest the fish and the fishermen that work those boats.”
At the market, Bell pays higher-than-average prices per pound for mullet because she wants it delivered a certain way: already bled out with their necks broken. (Typically, fish are simply thrown in an ice locker.) That’s just one reason the fried mullet next door at the restaurant needs no dressing up — just a squeeze of lemon.
Star Fish Company isn’t the only local restaurant that’s benefited from the Bells’ Midas touch. In the late 1980s, Bell’s father fronted the then-fledgling Beach Bistro on Anna Maria Island with fish, allowing the owners to pay him back on their own terms. These days, the restau rant — now on Zagat’s “Top Restaurants in America” list — is known for its upscale, innovative showings of Gulf seafood. Despite the pricey dishes and perfect-for an-anniversary-celebration atmosphere, the menu is anything but showy: Snapper à la française, for example, translates to “Snapper ‘French Guy Style.’”
Like many of his local restaurateur brethren, chef/owner Sean Murphy rejects the misinformed perceptions the general public holds about the oil spill. He reacted by offering cheeky “BP Martinis” and donating the proceeds to a fishermen’s charity. “We start with crystal blue waters,” Murphy says, as he mixes vodka and neon Curaçao into a glass. “Next we add chocolate sauce and Godiva liqueur for the oil, and a couple of coffee beans for tar balls. Then we lie to you about how much alcohol is in it!”
It’s easy to joke now, especially since the spill is no longer front-page news and the water on Florida’s southwest shore is still in the clear. And in Cortez and on its surrounding islands, just like before, the fishermen keep supplying local chefs with their fresh catches — and seafood lovers are itching to taste the end results.
EUPHEMIA HAYE RESTAURANT
5540 Gulf of Mexico Dr, Longboat Key; 941383-3633; euphemiahaye.com
STAR FISH COMPANY MARKET & RESTAURANT
12306 46th Ave W, Cortez; 941-794-1243; starfishcompany.com
BEACH BISTRO
6600 Gulf Dr, Holmes Beach; 941-778-6444; beachbistro.com
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