Capt. Tony's Saloon Jewfish

Look up before you walk into Captain Tony's Saloon on Greene Street and a large fish with an open mouth is mounted over the door. The bar's own history page calls it 'Tony's jewfish', which Islands.com identifies as an Atlantic goliath grouper, and says it still hangs above the door. Islands.com wrote in December 2024 that the grouper was caught and preserved by Captain Tony Tarracino himself, the charter-boat captain who bought the bar in 1958 and gave it his name.

The fish is a fitting emblem for a building that has had many lives. According to the saloon, 428 Greene Street was built in 1851 as an ice house that doubled as the city morgue, later held a wireless telegraph station and a cigar factory, and in 1933 became the first Sloppy Joe's, where the bar says Ernest Hemingway spent most of his evenings until 1937. Sloppy Joe's moved to its present Duval Street address in 1938, and after several later incarnations the Greene Street premises became Captain Tony's in 1958. The saloon also says Jimmy Buffett got his start in Key West there in the early 1970s.