Bay Area restaurant specializes in seafood, Southern cuisine
Florida Cracker Fish Company offers Southern cuisine
FOX 13 photojournalist Jason Wright introduces us to Florida Cracker Fish Company in Citrus Park, where the menu represents various parts of the Tampa Bay area.
CITRUS PARK, Fla. - An old southern Florida house, built in the style common more than a century ago, is now home to some serious Southern cooking.
What they're saying:
"It's cool. It's an old early 1900s-style house, it has the old bones of that house, the house grandma used to live in – a vibe that can't be touched," said Blair Hensley, the owner of the Florida Cracker Fish Company. "It's just a true old fish shack."
The menu brings out the Tampa Bay area with nods to Plant City, Davis Island, Courtney Campbell, and, of course, Citrus Park, where the restaurant is located.
Florida Cracker Fish Company serves seafood and Southern cuisine in Citrus Park.
"Some of these items on the menu... hold dear to me and my brother as a whole, like the crab and corn chowder, that was my mom's recipe and we've been eating that our whole life," said Hensley.
He shared how his family was in the kitchen all the time. The matriarchs in the family passed down recipes made from scratch with what was in the garden or at the market.
"We're used to havin' real food all the time," he admitted. And, he brings that training and thinking to the Florida Cracker Fish Company. "It's all fresh seafood, fresh gulf shrimp, we have a fresh catch right now, we always have fresh grouper," he admitted, "It's very seafood-centric, but don't forget, I'll put our burger against anybody's in Tampa."
Florida Cracker Fish Company serves seafood and Southern cuisine in Citrus Park.
And while the recipes are homemade, like mom used to make, not everything is from her.
"One of (our) unique items, which everybody does now, is shrimp and grits. But ours is done totally different," said Hensly. "And how that came about is my great-grandmother lived with us eight or nine years. And she cooked all the meals for us during that timeframe."
Florida Cracker Fish Company serves seafood and Southern cuisine in Citrus Park.
Hensley learned the recipes and has applied those to the fresh fish and local catches they get from Tampa Bay area fish markets.
"The experience here at the Florida Cracker Fish Company is 'Our family welcoming Your Family into our house,'" he said.
Florida Cracker Fish Company is located at 7604 Ehrlich Road in the Citrus Park area. You can find their menu by clicking here.
The Source: Information for this story was gathered by FOX 13 photojournalist Jason Wright.
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