Bill Dugan opened The Fish Guy market on Elston north of Montrose to sell lobsters and fish at a time when dedicated fish markets were in a gray area between dying off and being trendy again. In 2006 he started what we now would call a pop-up restaurant, Wellfleet, on weekend evenings in his shop. And now he’s smashing it all: starting this weekend, he’ll be tearing out The Fish Guy to create a permanent version of Wellfleet which will include fish counter, table seating for lunch and dinner… and pizza. We’re not exactly sure how that fits in with the rest of it, but we’re excited to see so much activity in a neighborhood whose culinary range can best be summed up in the words “50 different South American rotisserie chicken places.”
Dugan says “I hope we will be no longer than 15 days before we open to reveal our new look,” but with demolition crews coming in Sunday, he’s got fish to move out of there, and consequently there’s going to be some pretty serious sale pricing on large quantities of aquatic life, and lots of wheeling and dealing (“It’s a twenty pound fish…make an offer!”) In any case, we loved this note in Dugan’s announcement email: “I won’t bore you with the details nor will I be documenting our progress on Facebook or Twitter as frankly, it’s not that interesting.” Spoken like a true fish guy.
