Gulf Coasting: The Mad Hog at Mad Beach Fish House

If you’ve never heard of hogfish (Lachnolaimus maximus), here’s a primer from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. Even if you know of hogfish, and you’re curious about its biological provenance, fishing limits and seasons, or its bona fides as a game fish, this will satisfy all those concerns, as well.

Or, you could go to Mad Beach Fish House in Madeira Beach, which, as far as I’ve been able to tell in my years of coastal dining, is the only eatery in the Tampa Bay area that serves hogfish. The fish’s rarity in the Gulf — it can only be fished certain times of year and within a limited range in the Atlantic — could explain my lack of familiarity with it. Mad Beach won’t provide the sort of encyclopedia-entry knowledge you get from the FWC, but it will serve you a Mad Hog sandwich, a far more valuable and delicious commodity.

Mad Beach has been around for a few years, but I’ve only been once before. It occupies the top floor of a building that also houses a yacht-cruise ticket office. This, to me, is part of its unique charm. The space comprises an outdoor rooftop bar and indoor dining area  ringed with windows, guaranteeing all diners a lovely view of either the gulf or the Intracoastal.

I waited awhile to be seated before sidling up to the 360-degree bar, which wraps around the serving area and towers of bottles. The bartender was initially gruff and didn’t seem enthusiastic to be there. This was understandable to a degree; it was a chilly day and not too busy when I arrived. My rum runner was solid and strong. Although it lacked the Barcardi 151 “float” that is a common add-on to this cocktail, the bartender did throw a bunch of extra cocktail cherries in at my request.

I thought my cheesy announcement that I’d never had hogfish before would provoke from the bartender a soliloquy about the fish, where it was fished, and all that I had been missing. Instead, “Hunh. Okay. It’s good,” sufficed. And such was the tenor of my service at the bar.

But the sandwich!

One important measure of a good sandwich is how much bread is left on the plate following the meal, and I admit I did have visions of a tiny filet swamped on a thick, flavorless bun. Who knows how big hogfish are, anyway? If it’s such a rare fish, they can’t be heaping it on the bun, right?

On the contrary, the photo here indicates this sandwich’s majestic preparation: a toasted, buttered hoagie roll, two blackened filets of the Mad Hog, a ramekin of house-made tartar sauce, heavy on the dill, which thrilled me immensely. The bartender did “swell with pride” (or, rather, muttered casually in passing) in noting that all sauces were made in-house. Although making tartar sauce isn’t really a major production, it was much appreciated. Dill! Too many places ignore the dill in their tartar sauces.

At the advice of the editor-in-chief, I applied the tartar sauce to the bun, not something I usually do on blackened fish. I had also declined to add cheese to the sandwich, as cheese on blackened fish is also usually a major no-no (with some notable exceptions). It couldn’t have worked better. From the fixings pile I selected the lettuce, three butter dill chips, and two sliced onion rings.

Hogfish: flaky, mostly firm, somewhere between cod and grouper as far as texture goes, and thin. I almost want to take some credit for assembling the sandwich with the right proportions of ingredients, but blackened fish almost always overwhelms whatever shortcomings may exist elsewhere in the dish. This was far from the case here. The bun had many pockets, almost English muffin-like, to absorb the tartar sauce and prevent it from dominating the flavor profile. The onion, lettuce, and pickle likewise were nice accompaniments as opposed to major presences. And wow, the fish. It’s one of those “if you like grouper, try hogfish” rationales that I hate, but it’s appropriate here. It is really good. Buttery, flaky, lots of flavor, melt-in-your mouth texture, everything I look for in a fish sandwich. Now, to be fair, as mentioned, blackening is a salve on anything, flavor-wise, so maybe next time I’ll try it grilled, as it would probably give a fairer idea of the species’s more natural goodness.

I had been under the impression for years that hogfish was a type of snapper. God knows where I got that idea, but thank you again to the FWC for setting me straight. That is one crazy looking fish. Nothing like a snapper. They do share the most important attribute in common with snappers, though: They are excellent food fish. Both are also pretty rare on the Gulf Coast, and both are also now near the top of my favorite fish list.