It
is if you buy it from Steve Bailey at Risky Business.
It seems
like every time you pick up the newspaper these days or turn on one of
those investigative
television news programs, such as “60 Minutes” or
“20/20,” you see a report
questioning the safety of the seafood you buy.
And
the fact is that you do need to be concerned about where it came from,
how it was handled,
and from whom you buy it.
That
last concern - from whom you buy it is the most important. A good
seafood retailer will worry
about the first two for you. He’ll make sure that he buys his
seafood only from reputable
commercial fishermen or fish wholesalers who handle it with safety and quality in
mind.
Take Steve Bailey, for instance.
Steve, a
commercial fisherman, has been in the retail seafood business on
Hatteras Island for
22 years. He opened his Risky Business seafood company on
Oden’s Dock, which is
behind Nedo’s Shopping Center in Hatteras village, in 1986.
In 2006, he and Beth opened
a store in Avon, located next to the Village Grocery at the stop light.
You can’t
miss the bright yellow building
Steve
grew up in the mountains of North Carolina. Upon graduating from
Atlantic Christian
College and teaching school for a short time, he moved to Hatteras in
1979 and started
life as a commercial fisherman.
These
days Steve, who is 60, lives in Hatteras village with his wife Beth,
who runs his store in
Avon. During the summer, he sells seafood. In the spring, he crabs, and
in the fall and
winter he plays and commercial fishes.
Steve
says his customers often ask him why he named his enterprise,
“Risky Business.”
The answer, he says, is simple. ”Anytime you buy anything
fresh and have to sell it
before it gets old, it’s a risky business.”
He
doesn’t have anything in his market that he
wouldn’t take home and serve at his own table.
Steve’s
secret is buying his seafood from fishermen and dealers he knows handle
their seafood
carefully to keep it fresh and safe. All the local fishermen that Steve
buys from know he is
very picky about his fish. He demands the freshest fish and pays more for
it and rightly so. “Ice is a necessity in the summer months,”
Steve says. “All my fisherman carry ice on
their boats.”
Sometimes
shopping can be a real pain but you can make an adventure out of it at Risky
Business. Come visit Steve at Oden’s Dock in Hatteras Village
and walk the waterfront.
You and your family can view the commercial and sportfishing boats and watch them
unload their catches of large tuna, dolphin, and wahoo. Many people
enjoy watching
Steve clean the day’s catches.
So
pack up the family and come to Risky Business around 4:00 in the
afternoon. You can
entertain the family and get some of the freshest local seafood on the
island. But if you
can’t make it to Hatteras Village, you can still stop by and
see Beth in Avon. A
specialty at Risky Business is their famous spicy steamed shrimp. Pick
up orders may be
called in at both locations. Do you know what Beth and
Steve’s best seafood seller
is? It’s Risky Business’s
homemade jumbo lump crab cakes
which are made from fresh North Carolina crabmeat ... not from some imported
Asian pasteurized tree crab. We use crabmeat as filler, not
bread. Our crab cakes are
100% fresh crabmeat with herbs grown in our garden.
Another
specialty service that Risky Business offers is vacuum packing,
freezing and storing fish
for people who have been charter fishing. Probably half of the fish
caught on charter
boats is ruined by improper freezing. “Vacuum packing is the
only way to go”, Steve says.
“Every customer who has tried it has come back with praise
about how great their
seafood was!!”
And
if you need information on just about anything else - from fishing to
sightseeing - to helping you
enjoy your Hatteras vacation, look up Steve at Oden’s Dock (986-2117), or Beth
in
Avon (995-7003). Or email
us.
Check
out Risky's new
and .
"Risky's
always more than
happy to help you"
HatterasVillage,
Oden's Dock below the
BreakwaterRestaurant ...
252-986-2117 Avon,
Hwy 12 at Kinnakeet Corner ... 252-995-7003
Open 7 Days a Week ... Seasonal
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