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From water to platter, his fish story

By SHEELA RAMAN
Published December 11, 2006

The cage creaks up, covered in barnacles. Sam Hart flicks the lid and eyes his catch, a moving mass of brown and gray sludge. Black stone crab pincers glisten as the crabs trample one of their brethren, half its head eaten out.

Hart bellows, blue eyes gleaming. His laugh is a staccato, like the swift movements of his hands. He snatches the maimed crab and sizes up its claw.

Head or no head, if a stone crab's claw measures 2 3/4 inches or more, it will grace a platter at Sam's Fresh Seafood, Hart's restaurant in Dunedin.

A Florida fisherman for 40 years, nothing about stone crabs surprises Hart - even cannibalism. He is one of the few left who brings his catch to his own restaurant, where he cooks and serves it the same day.

Hart, 59, lives with his wife, Phyllis, in the same modest Ozona home he grew up in. Standing on his 20-year-old boat, docked in the Ozona harbor directly across from his home, Hart points and grins.

"That's a cracker house," he says proudly.

A wide, sturdy man with a red face and booming voice, Hart talks little else but fish and favors aphorism and tidbits.

Although he learned how to fish as a child from his father and uncles, Hart started fishing for a living in 1982, when he and Phyllis opened a fresh seafood market on Main Street in Dunedin, inspired by the popularity of the new fresh fish markets appearing in Winn-Dixie and other major grocery stores.

The couple became renowned for their $1.99 mullet dinners, which often were cleaned and prepared by Hart and his wife minutes before being served.

Business at the market started dwindling in the mid-1990s as many started getting their fish from larger chains, and mullet became more of a special taste than a local staple. For a change, he and Phyllis closed the market and converted an old gas station on Alt. U.S. 19 into a full-fledged seafood restaurant, where mullet and stone crabs could be enjoyed as well as salmon, grouper and scallops.

These days, Hart no longer catches his own mullet, but he stone crabs three or four days a week during the October to May season. Hart's boat is no more than 6 feet wide and 15 feet long. Keeping with his no-nonsense demeanor, it has no name and no adornments. A large baseball cap perched precariously at the top of his ample head, he sets off at 7 a.m. and returns around 3 p.m. to a silent dock that once bustled with a fish house and fishermen's banter.

Hart may be in tune with the stone crab's rhythms and habits, but he tunes out the condos and single-family homes that crowd the coastline. On his way out to sea, looking at new homes on Crystal Beach, he asks in a deep Southern drawl, "Did you know that the mullet is the only fish with a gizzard?"

This fact sets his eyes twinkling.

"They're also vegetarians," he adds.

As Hart reels in the lines with a fast and sure grip, he hardly notices the sea slime splattering his apron and white rubber boots. His movements are so practiced that he seems to use one sweeping motion to haul up the cage, sort through the crabs and snap off the worthy claws.

There is a metal gauge attached to the side of the boat to measure claw length, but Hart needs only a glance to know if a claw makes the cut.

He usually checks on 200 of his 500 traps every time he goes out to sea, partly to make sure poachers aren't stealing the precious crabs, which can fetch up to $40 per pound in some restaurants. Hart's platters start at $15.99 per pound.

Often, Hart will find the doors open to many of his traps because poachers have forgotten to close them again after taking his catch. On a good day, Hart can bring back about 70 pounds of crab.

Hart hides his traps where the sea floor has the most crevices, where crabs like to hide, but the creatures can be elusive.

"You try to outfigure your crabs," he explains, "but Mother Nature usually wins."

* * *

At the restaurant, Hart spends the rest of his day trying to outfigure the unpredictable flow of restaurant customers.

His strategy involves sharing expertise with any customer who expresses the slightest interest in fishing. The goal is to maintain the flow of regulars who come for stone crab, mullet roe and even the mullet grits served with the "Florida Cracker Breakfast" on Sunday mornings.

Inside, the restaurant is a combination of a fishermen's den and a New Jersey diner. The waitresses call customers "Hon;" most people wear jeans and T-shirts, and the walls are covered with mounted specimens of hefty marlin, mahi-mahi, grouper and mullet that Hart and other local fishermen have caught.

The hostess station to the restaurant also contains a mini-fish market selling Florida fare, including mullet gizzard, which looks like a plucked eyeball when raw. Photographs of old-time Ozona fishermen line the walls.

Hart is back and forth between the kitchen and the dining room. At 5:30 p.m., he is freshly showered and waiting for the water in the stone crab pot to boil. Even in fresh clothes, with his salt-and-pepper hair combed to the side, Hart still looks more like a fisherman than a restaurant owner, with his red face, robust demeanor and beer in hand.

He promptly serves two vodka tonics to his first customers of the evening, without them even asking. Susan and John Turner of Palm Harbor started coming to Sam's Fresh Seafood a little over a year ago, when the retired couple moved to Florida. Now, they come to Sam's every week, for their favorite drink and seafood dinner, and often for fishing tips.

Hart has instructed the couple on how to get a recreational stone crabbing license, and as Hart served them drinks, they told him how wonderful their first fresh-caught batch tasted.

"You know, when the spider crabs show up in the trap, the stone crabs will soon follow," Hart tells John Turner, turning back to the kitchen to attend to the cooking crabs.

"He's become a good friend," Susan Turner said. "He's helped us out when he didn't have to. He didn't have to share all his fishing information."

Two men Hart doesn't know arrive and order appetizers. He immediately walks over. He asks the men, who are Canadian tourists, if they plan on fishing while in Florida. He tells them where to buy bait and tackle, and that it's okay to fish recreationally without a license.

"Don't worry," he says, "the locals will tell you where to go."

As Hart charms the customers and cooks the crabs, Phyllis paces between the kitchen, the hostess station, and the office, alternately carrying 12-pound packs of meat and greeting customers. Her arms are strong and her brow is often crinkled in concentration.

The couple work at the restaurant six days a week and hasn't taken a vacation in 10 years. On their days off, they often come into the restaurant to make repairs or clean up. They have no plans to retire.

"It's not a job; it's a way of life," Phyllis Hart says. "We couldn't do anything else."

Times staff writer Sheela Raman can be reached at sraman@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4158.

[Last modified December 10, 2006, 23:51:47]