An unassuming Savannah staple with humble beginnings offers some first-class fare
Written by CAROLINE HATCHETT
Photography by PETER COLIN MURRAY
IT WAS MY TURN AT THE WINDOW, and I couldn’t decide what to order from Shabazz Seafood, the pint-sized, canary yellow seafood shack on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Victory Drive. I scanned nearby picnic tables and asked city workers for suggestions, and the consensus on that Tuesday afternoon was the Shabazz Fish Supreme Sandwich. I added a slice of cheese to my order — why not?! — and slipped a credit card into a metal transaction drawer/portal of sorts through which my meal emerged five minutes later.
As I unwrapped the sandwich from its white paper packaging, I found its appearance to be, well, a little simple. But after a few bites, I realized I was holding a masterpiece of a fish sandwich stacked with strips of crispy, juicy fried whiting. American cheese, creamy and melted just so, lay languidly over the fish. Iceberg lettuce imparted a refreshing crunch, and Shabazz Sauce (mayo-based but otherwise a mystery) added rich oomph. And rather than piling all that goodness onto a bun, from which the fish would surely tumble, two slices of soft wheat bread wrapped around the whiting like a hug.
“Customers will visit and say, ‘I came to the restaurant when it first opened. Is the fish sandwich the same?’ Let me tell y’all something: The recipe has not changed from the beginning.”
— Dr. Estella Edwards Shabazz
Shabazz Seafood opened in 1989, but the fish sandwich predates the landmark restaurant. Yusef Shabazz, a Savannah native, found himself in Columbus, Georgia, in the late ’80s working for the Minority Business Development Agency. He often took early lunch breaks, using the time to go home and make fish sandwiches for everyone in the building. At first, he gave out free samples, but as word got out, he started selling them floor by floor. When Yusef returned to Savannah, he wooed his future wife, Dr. Estella Edwards Shabazz, with his cooking, and the couple started selling fish sandwiches (plus his deviled crabs) on weekends from a blue cargo van.
“Customers will visit and say, ‘I came to the restaurant when it first opened. Is the fish sandwich the same?’” recalls Estella, who’s also an alderwoman for Savannah’s 5th District and the city’s Mayor Pro Tem. “Let me tell y’all something: The recipe has not changed from the beginning.”
Yusef modeled the sandwich after versions he remembers his mom and church community making. “It’s a down-home recipe,” he says. “When you’re at the house, you don’t go buy sandwich buns. We used what was readily available and economical for us.”
Don’t let the sandwich’s humble origins fool you though. Both Shabazzes are civil engineers, and Yusef approaches cooking as he would building a bridge or roadway. “Everything I do is scientific,” says a man who has figured out how to maximize craveability, texture and flavor in a $7.50 sandwich ($8 with cheese).
The sandwich has also helped the Shabazzes fortify their community. “We try to affect change with the business,” says Yusef, who has served on the Chatham County Commission and won the 2022 Outstanding Georgia Citizen Award. Among other efforts, the Shabazzes work with Family Promise, a nonprofit tackling family homelessness, and the Greenbrier Children’s Center, a childcare and early learning center and emergency shelter for children and young adults. The couple has also built affordable housing units in various parts of the city.
Thanks to marketing efforts by their daughter Kalifa Shabazz and a recent appearance on the Netflix series, “Fresh, Fried & Crispy,” the restaurant now attracts diners from farther afield — visitors looking for a taste of authentic, iconic Savannah. And with every fish sandwich they buy, these interlopers inadvertently pump money back into Savannah’s most vulnerable communities.
While your moral compass might lead you to Shabazz, the Fish Supreme Sandwich itself is pull enough.
“When customers say it’s their first time coming to the restaurant,” says Estella, “I tell them, ‘All we needed was for you to come one time, and we got you for life.’”
