FISH
Hampton’s Towne Centre, off Big Bethel Way.
“This restaurant is our thank you to the entire 757,” she says. “We wanted to make sure the customers had a place to sit down, show our appreciation for how much they’ve been riding with us through the snow, the rain, and the wind.”
The sit-down and take-out spot will open in mid-December — and for the first time since Sept. 1, 2017, the Bartleys will park their truck for the season. The truck will return in early spring.
They scouted all over Hampton Roads for a restaurant location, says Ja’Nee, but Hampton turned out to be the home of their most die-hard customers.
“We love all of the seven cities that we go to,” she says, “but Hampton really stood out: Our customers were really intentionally supportive. It didn’t matter what the weather conditions were: Where we set up, they were there.”
Two years ago, the couple set up for the first time at a gas station in Portsmouth. Anticius, who often goes by “Skee,” grew up helping his father at an impromptu fish cart in South Jersey that didn’t even have a name. Ja’Nee comes from Baltimore, where crab runs deep.
They derived their name from the Bible: “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
“We’re really big on community,” Ja’Nee says, “reaching out to the community, making people feel welcome, making people feel seen and letting people know they’re loved, creating an environment where people can just enjoy themselves.”
But when they first set up at a Portsmouth gas station, and then at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Ja’Nee says they weren’t very well connected.
“I would say those first three months of 2017 were pretty rough. It was probably March of 2018, about six months in, that word really got out.”
The Bartleys credit their early success in part to a friend from their church who got word to local vlogger Jamel Spalding, better known as Yummo Bucko. Bucko filmed an enthusiastic endorsement of their fried whiting sandwich smothered in housemade sauce and slaw, a butter crunch cake dessert and fries loaded up with lump crab.
As their customer base has grown, the menu has expanded from the original three items to include crab cake specials, shrimp and grits, seafood platters and the occasional lobster roll or po’boy.
When their restaurant opens this month in a former textbook store at 14 Towne Centre Way, the Bartleys say that all of those favorites will be on the menu.
But there will also be a few new dishes they decline to name.
“We’re expanding the menu just a bit,” Ja’Nee says. “But we want to leave a few surprises.”