The Reef

–best stop so far. I don’t mind cooking some on long vacations. We come here every year & they always have great fresh fish. We bought 2lbs of grouper which made huge tacos & another huge dinner.
Someone was complaining about the prices, but they are definitely competitive with all the fish markets I know. Sure you could go to the grocery, but it wouldn’t be fresh. You could go to a restaurant, but be very disappointed. We dropped 80 bucks at a fish shack the other day. –for $ 42+ a couple groceries we had 2 great meals. — & here you can know what you’re getting.
It’s a small place but the selection is adequate. The older gentleman was very helpful in answering questions & offered to pull out the pin bones (?right name?) which I did myself because I brought my fish tweezers. I also bought some horseradish & he threw in 2 lemons for free.

The only negative is that the parking is atrocious. This isn’t different than many places by the beach though. –Only a couple places in their side lot which are always taken & the other 2 spaces are for someone else. There’s street parking in front if you can snag a place. We always ride down together so one can run in & the other circle the coral. –nice little place

$ 25 a pound grouper. It had a few other varieties of similar priced fish and some $ 20 a pound shrimp. For those prices I will go to a restaurant and get a dinner. Fish dip was mediocre.

Went there at 5:50 on Sunday, they were there, could see us but wouldn’t let us in. Rude.

Great little fresh fish market! You would never expect this little place to be so good! They have a wide variety of fresh fish, stone crab, clams, and freshly made crab cakes. They also have the best smoked fish spread I have personally ever tasted! This is the same spread you get at most (if not all) of the local restaurants. However if you buy it here you get 3 times the amount for the same price (about $ 10).

Great staff & an excellent selction of fresh seafood!!! Seasonal selections as well. Got great soft shell crabs back in season in the summer!!!

Wonderful mom and pop style seafood spot!
We stopped by twice during our recent stay in the area for fresh pink gulf shrimp, fresh crab cakes and the legendary smoked fish spread. My hubby made us go back before we left town to pick up more of the fish spread.

Great little shop with lots of fresh seafood to offer! We bought some grouper, scallops and fish spread. Everything was super fresh and practically melted in your mouth! I also like that they throw in some lemons with every purchase!

The BEST FISH SPREAD I’ve ever tasted in life!!! Seriously… No joke. The hubby & I used to go to this seafood restaurant on St. Pete Beach that we absolutely LOVED! When we moved away to DC we couldn’t wait to get back to our lil’ seafood spot in Florida to grab some of our favorite grub. This last time, we came out, only to find out that our spot had closed. Luckily, the last time we were there, we asked them if they would tell us how they prepared their crab cakes & their fish spread since we were moving away. They gave us their crab cake recipe & the told us where they got there fish spread from… And this is the place! The Reef! We quickly Unilocaled this place to track down the infamous fish spread. We were on a mission! We drove for what seemed like hours (actually about 10 minutes) and finally arrived. From the outside, the place probably wouldn’t have caught my eye, but I knew what was waiting for me inside… (Never judge a book by it’s cover!). We went in and bought a pound of fish spread. It tasted just as good as we remembered… PHENOMENAL!!! I don’t think we ate anything other than fish spread for the rest of the day (lunch, dinner & breakfast the next day).
When we were planning the menu for my husband & sister-in-law’s graduation party the next day, we ended up going back to the Reef & buying a whole GALLON of that stuff! Everyone at the party LOVED IT! It’s some good stuff!
(The spread is good by itself w/​crackers, but if you add a dash of hot sauce it really takes it to another level!!!)