Why We Love It: Not all Florida Keys restaurants serve fresh, locally caught seafood – a premise that inspired the three partners to establish Three Hands Fish. Deeply committed to supporting local fishermen and what they catch, they’ve built relationships with fishermen, employed fillet masters and established both a consumer fish market and delivery for Keys restaurants. Their Know Your Fisherman and “Who Caught It?” campaign includes baseball cards to put a face to the job and make sure all local seafood is tagged with the name and face of the fisherman who reeled it, speared it or trapped it.
The program is designed to help prevent seafood fraud that has plagued many port cities, in which menus claim seafood is fresh and local when it is imported and frozen. “The antidote to seafood dishonesty is transparency, and that’s exactly what ‘Who Caught It?’ provides, says Captain Zane Osborn, a fisherman and supplier of his seafood to the market and adjacent restaurant, The Stoned Crab. They also supply restaurants in the lower Keys, including Hogfish Bar & Grill, Firefly, Santiago’s Bodega, Blue Heaven, Roostica, The Square Grouper, Antonia’s, Nine One Five and Seven Fish.