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Food & Drink

Buying Gulf Seafood in Naples

Cooking a fish you bought three hours after it was landed is the cheapest luxury in Naples.

By the Best of Naples editors4 min readUpdated
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The short answer

If you have a rental with a kitchen, the single best-value meal in Naples is one you cook. The local counters get Gulf fish daily, and the difference between that and a supermarket fillet is not subtle.

Fresh Gulf fish and stone crab claws on ice at a Naples seafood counter

Jump to the questions people ask about this.

What is actually local

  • Grouper — red and black, year-round with seasonal closures
  • Yellowtail and mangrove snapper
  • Hogfish — a southwest Florida speciality
  • Pink shrimp from the Gulf fleet
  • Stone crab claws, mid-October to mid-May
  • Mullet, in winter, and worth trying smoked

What is not local, whatever the sign implies: salmon, tuna in most cases, cod, tilapia, and any 'jumbo' shrimp at a suspicious price.

How to buy well

  • Ask what came in today. A good counter answers immediately and specifically.
  • Ask fresh or previously frozen. Both are legitimate; being told the truth is the test.
  • Buy whole where you can. It keeps better, costs less per pound of edible fish, and the eyes tell you the truth about freshness.
  • Smell it. Fresh Gulf fish smells of clean sea water and nothing else.

Cooking it simply

Grouper: floured and pan-fried in butter with lemon, four minutes a side. Snapper: whole, scored, roasted at 220°C for 18 minutes with lime and garlic. Stone crab: already cooked when you buy it — chill it, crack it, mustard sauce, do nothing else to it. Any attempt to improve a stone crab claw is a mistake.

Common questions

Where do locals buy fish in Naples?
Independent seafood counters and fish markets around Naples and the Cocohatchee River area, most of which take deliveries from Gulf boats daily. Ask what landed that morning.
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