Gulf Coast Crab & Seafood

Chef Rich Demarse was living in Charleston, South Carolina, when he was recruited by Ed Chiles to be the chef at Mar Vista Dockside in Longboat Key. After six months at Mar Vista, he moved on to another Chiles Group property, The SandBar Restaurant on Anna Maria Island. Chef Rich spent five happy years at The SandBar, where—thanks to the wholesale license—he met many fishermen and was exposed to the abundance and beauty of fish and seafood available in the Gulf.

And then the pandemic hit … and things began to change “I spent almost 30 years in the restaurant industry working to get to this position [executive chef] but then the passion seemed to go, and I needed a new challenge.” Rich met a man who was living a life that appealed to him. “He was a great guy, a family man, honest to a fault. We shared the same values. He was having so much fun crabbing with his family, he wasn’t even charging enough for his product.” So, Rich set out to learn that craft.

Rich’s wife and business partner, Kim Barnes Lemke, says that she watched his stress level and anxiety change because of the career change. He just got so much more relaxed even though the life of a fisherman is a long hard day’s work. In the beginning Rich was working at Zildjian Catering and selling blue crab on the weekends out of the Exxon station north of the airport. “Bradenton is blue crab crazy and there’s a lot of people from Maryland in Sarasota, so we were selling out within a few hours.”

That continued until September, when it was time to get ready for stone crab season. When you’re on the right path, everything leads into everything else, and Gulf Coast Crab & Seafood was born. It’s all about seasonality and sustainability and keeping things fresh and local. Rich still works out of the Zildjian Catering kitchen, cleaning and prepping fish and seafood for his latest ventures such as pop-up seafood dinners at Dive Wine & Spirits or returning to the Exxon to sell delectable garlic crab or garlic shrimp made with pink Gulf shrimp from Fort Myers. Rich sources local fish and seafood and offers pickup orders through his website with three locations in Sarasota and Bradenton.

“The seafood business is a lot of smoke and mirrors,” he says. “Fish should be good for over a week or more when it’s fresh. Fish from the supermarket has been sitting on a boat for so long before it’s even auctioned off and then frozen if it’s imported.”

To talk with Rich and Kim about their business is to truly understand the adage “Find something you love to do, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Rich is passionate about teaching children about the importance of sustainability and about the joy of fishing; he also wants to teach cooking classes. I, for one, can’t wait to learn how to make that craveable garlic crab.

“I’m not doing this to be wealthy, I just want to be fulfilled.” He fairly glows when he talks about driving through Cortez Fishing Village in his former life. “I used to look at the boats and think that if I could do that for a living then I would be happy. Now I just get on my bike and I go there, and I do it. There’s a lot of hard work with prepping and stocking and driving and then, when you’re on the boat, it goes from sunrise to sunset. But at the end of the day—it’s still the best day ever.”

> gulfcoastcrabandseafood.com; facebook.com/gulfcoastcrabandseafood

Here is a list of some of the locally caught fish and shellfish you can find at Gulf Coast Crab & Seafood.

Stone crab

Blue crab

Pink Gulf shrimp

Grey mullet

Sheepshead

Gulf grouper

Sand bream

Black drum

Ocean trout

Smoked mullet

Spanish mackerel

King mackerel

Octopus