I'll fight anyone on this, the best 'fresh fish' on the planet is the walleye or northern pike you catch in the morning and fry on the shore not even hours after catching, with a slice of raw onion, hot sauce on some crappy white bread for a sandwich.
I certainly won't disagree. I rank some fresh caught ocean fish as being (nearly) as good.
I was pursing the "Interwebs" about the term "fresh" as applied to fish, and my conclusion is there is not actual hard definition of the term, certainly nothing legal. A place can advertise "freshest fish around" and sell stuff that was frozen. A lot of places use the term "freshest" instead of "fresh", which is ... fascinating. I maintain nearly all of it is frozen at some point. And it likely tastes better if the fish is more than 24 hours from being caught.
I think oysters are shipped cold and not frozen (usually), but not fish much at all. If a restaurant has its own ships, maybe some is fresh, if they buy from SYSCO, well ...
It's not the same, but the local pub downstairs has numerous trucks delivering food and booze daily, it's pretty interesting to see what shows up. They offer some fried fish usually, from SYSCO or whoever, no claim of being remotely fresh. It's a bar, the food is OK for bar food, no claim for being superb. We go when neither of us wants to cook and we don't want to walk somewhere further. Their well drinks are still $8 which is a deal around here.
We'll likely go back to the St. Armand's place, that little island is nice. I'd still like to find a "shack" somewhere with its own boats. That Tarpon Point place qualifies as a shack, but the last time we were there we walked in and waited to be seated several minutes and left, I have low patience for that. Tourism.
