BizBeat: Seafood restaurant comes ashore in Capital City

Paul Baker, owner of Paulie B's, a Cajun and southern-style seafood restaurant, is pictured at the business, which will open Dec. 1.
Paul Baker, owner of Paulie B's, a Cajun and southern-style seafood restaurant, is pictured at the business, which will open Dec. 1.

Paul Baker strolled around his new restaurant Tuesday evening and thought about his old life on the Gulf Coast and his new life back home in Mid-Missouri.

As he walked around the 2,500-square-foot restaurant, Baker paused and stared at photo of 13-year-old-son, Nolan, cradling 5-year-old son, Cleo, as they sat on a boat near Pensacola, Florida.

"This was our last family fish day before we moved up here," Baker said with a smile.

Baker grew up in New Bloomfield, but the sea stole his heart at an early age. Three months ago, Baker, his wife, Elizabeth, and their five children gave up their shrimping operation in Pensacola and moved to Missouri to spread the gospel of southern seafood among Mid-Missourians.

As Baker and his wife prepare to open Paulie B's at 829 Eastland Drive, the couple said they feel right at home in the Midwest.

At age 19 as Baker worked near Mobile, Alabama, he booked a day trip on a fishing boat that caught red snapper, and then he decided he wanted to fish for a living. For 10 years, he made his living off the sea in Pensacola. After working as a deckhand on a commercial red snapper fishing boat, he later bought his own 17-foot fishing boat.

At one point, he ran a commercial bait operation. After about three years running his bait company, Baker sold the business and bought a shrimping boat. Today, he still employs six people who work on his shrimp trawler in Pensacola.

On the sea, nothing else matters, Baker said while looking at the sunset.

"Whenever I went through Pensacola Pass and looked out, I was like 'My gosh, this is freedom,'" Baker said with a smile. "Whenever you cross out into the Gulf, there's no stoplights, there's no McDonald's on the corner, there's no gas stations.

There's nothing. You sit there, and it's amazing."

Baker started spreading southern seafood around Jefferson City five years ago. He created a Facebook group and gave Jefferson City residents a chance to buy seafood directly from his boat and from his friends along the Gulf Coast.

A car accident in Florida ended Baker's fishing career and forced him to slow down. About six months ago, Baker and his wife decided to move to Jefferson City and open a food truck that sold shrimp caught by their employees and other seafood caught by their friends.

Using retrofitted a trailer with cooking equipment, Baker and his wife opened the Paulie B's food truck.

Business exploded.

The couple started preparing food like shrimp, tuna steak and shrimp cakes at an event space in a farm field near Wardsville. Later, they set up shop near the Encore Department Store on Capitol Avenue and at other businesses around town.

"People love fresh seafood," Baker said. "It was fun, and it just keeps evolving."

The interior of Paulie B's restaurant looks more like a crab joint overlooking a bay in Mobile or Pensacola than a place in the Eastland Drive neighborhood in which it sits. White walls complement black counter tops and cedar, poplar and walnut wood tabletops. Black and white pictures showing Baker's 12-year-old son, Raymond, holding a small Blacktip shark on a fishing trip, his 6-year-old daughter, Adysen, with a red fish, and his son Cleo holding a bait fish adorn the walls.

Baker picked up cooking from his grandma and from cooks at southern seafood restaurants he frequented. Prawns, giant scallops, shrimp cakes, tuna cakes, oysters and crawfish will be featured. Other southern staples like gumbo and red beans and rice will round out the menu. Dishes will be priced between $5-$30, Baker said.

Paulie B's will open Dec. 1. Each week, the business will be open from 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday through Thursday and from 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Eventually, Baker hopes to take his local seafood distribution business off Facebook and make seafood available for purchase at the restaurant.

Baker's family is now settled in Wardsville, and his children attend school in the Blair Oaks R-2 School District. As finishing touches were put on the restaurant Tuesday night, Baker said he hopes to introduce Jefferson City residents to seafood at an affordable price.

"Great food doesn't have to cost a lot because great food is simple," he said. "I want to give a white linen experience on a blue-collar budget."