Scott Dolan opened Big Water Fish Market on Siesta Key at 11 a.m. on November 11, 2011, because he was tired of a specific complaint. As he got to know the island in the years before, he kept running into the same problem: anyone who wanted real seafood without leaving Siesta Key had exactly two options. "It was either Walt's Fish Market or Publix," he's said of those early days. Both meant crossing the bridge. So Dolan opened a retail fish market and small kitchen on Midnight Pass Road, in the Crescent Beach Shopping Center, and built a menu around a grouper sandwich that Southern Living and Edible magazines have since called one of the best in Florida. For fifteen years, Big Water's whole reason for existing was to keep islanders from having to leave.
This June, Dolan did something that reads like a plot twist if you've followed the story: he opened a second restaurant, and it's on the mainland.
What Actually Opened on Bee Ridge Road
Happy Clams and Hams opened June 8, 2026, at 4110 Bee Ridge Road in Sarasota, a straight shot off the island and nowhere near a beach. Dolan built it with two partners, Carlyle Veale and Brian Paetsch, and it isn't a copy-paste of Big Water. The seafood case is still there, but the menu leans into Veale's Italian deli background, so you'll find the Big Water Grouper Sandwich sitting on a menu next to a Cuban, a muffuletta, and something called the Carlito's Way, a sub stacked with ham, prosciutto, salami, and fresh mozzarella.
"Carlyle has an Italian background, and her kind of a dream is to do an Italian-style deli, so we combined the two concepts," Dolan explained.
A few details separate it from its island parent. There's no beer and wine license at Happy Clams and Hams, though customers are welcome to bring their own. Seating tops out around 26. And the location wasn't random: Dolan wanted to be in the same plaza as Southern Steer Butcher, so shoppers could handle their seafood and their meat in one stop, something the Village's tight footprint never really allowed.
The irony is hard to miss if you've heard Dolan tell the origin story before. He built his business on solving the problem of islanders having to drive to the mainland for good seafood. Fifteen years later, his newest project exists because mainland customers wanted the same thing without driving onto the island.
The Corner That Isn't Getting Any Less Crowded
While Dolan was planning his exit from island-only operations, something close to the opposite was happening at the busiest intersection in Siesta Key Village.
The corner of Avenida Messina and Ocean Boulevard is now controlled almost entirely by one partnership. Mike Granthon and Chris Brown, operating as Above the Bar Hospitality Group, already owned Beach Club Siesta Key, Summer House Steak & Seafood, the Cottage, and the Hub Baja Grill when they took over the old Napoli's Italian Restaurant space at 5200 Ocean Boulevard and turned it into My Village Pub, known locally as MVP, a sports bar built around Brown's sports memorabilia collection. A few doors down at 5204 Ocean Boulevard, the same duo opened Siesta Poke, a build-your-own poke and açai concept that Sarasota Magazine later named one of the area's best new restaurants.
Add a third partner, chef Peter Geannopulos, and the group's reach extends well past the Key: Smokin' Joe's in downtown Sarasota, Mad Moe's Pub and Grill in Osprey. But it's the Village intersection where their ownership is most concentrated. Granthon has said as much himself, describing the corner as nearly complete coverage of the area's foot traffic.
Not everything on that stretch belongs to Above the Bar. A few doors away at 5049 Ocean Boulevard, chef Jakub Skoczylas and his wife Maja Rakowiecka opened the Duo Doner & Deli, bringing European-style kebabs and grab-and-go breakfast to a Village that Skoczylas felt was missing a quick option for beachgoers. It's an independent counterpoint to the pattern next door, proof the corner hasn't fully consolidated even if it's trending that way.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
Put the two stories side by side and you get a clearer picture of how growth works on Siesta Key right now than either story tells on its own.
- If you want the original grouper sandwich experience, that still requires being on the island. The Bee Ridge Road version comes with an Italian deli twist and no full bar.
- The busiest corner in the Village is now shaped by decisions made by essentially one ownership group, which means future changes to MVP, Siesta Poke, the Cottage, Summer House, and the Hub are all connected decisions, not independent ones.
- When an island institution wants to grow, expanding within the Village apparently isn't the default move. Dolan looked inland instead, which says something about how tight that stretch of Ocean Boulevard and Avenida Messina already is.
- Not every new name in the Village belongs to a bigger group. Duo Doner & Deli is a reminder that independent openings still happen alongside the consolidation.
None of this changes what it feels like to walk through the Village on a Friday night. It changes who's making the decisions about what that walk looks like five years from now.
The One Thing Not Up for Negotiation
Whatever happens to ownership on that corner, one Siesta Key tradition runs on a schedule nobody's group controls. Every Sunday, about an hour before sunset, drummers gather south of the main pavilion on Siesta Beach for the drum circle that's been running for decades under the loose direction of its founder, David Gittens, now in his 80s and still living in Sarasota. Dancers show up with scarves and hula hoops. A core group of about twenty musicians shows up nearly every week, joined by whoever else brought an instrument that day. It only gets canceled for hurricanes or red tide.
It isn't even unique to this island anymore. Nokomis Beach runs a more family-friendly version on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and Englewood Beach has its own Sunday evening circle. But the original is still here, still free, still happening regardless of who owns the restaurants a few blocks away.
That's the part of Siesta Key that doesn't change with a new lease or a new sign in a storefront window. The food scene shifts every few months. The corner of Avenida Messina and Ocean Boulevard will probably look different again in a year. The drum circle just keeps starting an hour before sunset, the way it always has.
If you're weighing what it actually means to live near a place this dynamic, whether that's the Village's food scene or a quieter stretch closer to Crescent Beach, Anthony LaPorta spends his time paying attention to exactly these kinds of shifts across Siesta Key and the surrounding Southwest Florida coast. Explore more of what's happening in the neighborhood on the Siesta Key community page, and reach out anytime. Let's Connect.
