“In the midst of all the clean-up from a storm, there’s still light,” said Olde Fish House owner Lisa Dence.

After sustaining extensive damage during Hurricane Ian, the Olde Fish House in Matlacha needs an enormous amount of work, Dence said.

“We lost all the docks, all the gas lines, all the electrical out back — we lost all of our plumbing underneath the building, so when it’s high tide it goes in the kitchen right now. We have holes all through the roofs. My brand new gallery and seafood market need all new trusses,” Dence said, approximating the damage at $500,000 to $700,000.

Central World Kitchen was kind enough to gift them a food truck, Dence said, but in light of all that’s been lost, a food truck alone will hardly sustain the financial needs of her family. With ownership of a food truck comes the need, by law, for a commissary from which to work. Leasing Lilly’s Island Deli seemed like the perfect solution to Dence, who now plans to make a fresh start by turning it into Salty Girls Island Café, with the goal of opening in February.

In addition to this new venture, Dence said there will be a new mini market at the St. James Civic Center in St. James City every Monday, from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. beginning Jan. 16, and continuing until the last Monday in March. This will be called the Matlacha Market with Washboard Scotty and Friends, housing many island businesses, in an effort to keep island revenue local.

The free-will donation to act as a vendor for this market is $20 per Monday, and will go to the St. James City Civic Association. The Olde Fish House food truck will also be at the St. James City Civic Center on the first Friday of every month during the open jam session.

“We’re inviting only Pine Island businesses to be there and Washboard Scotty and Friends are gonna play. I’ll be there every Monday with my Olde Fish House food truck — we’ve got some good things happening for the island and for people that lost their businesses,” Dence said, also naming Traders Hitching Post, Matlacha Menagerie and CW Fudge as other vendors.

The Salty Girls Island Café will not be a deli, but they will serve breakfast and lunch with a couple of dinners a month, in an intimate dinner setting, Dence said.

She wants to make it clear that the menu will be completely different than the Olde Fish House food truck menu, as there will be things like soups and sandwiches and biscuits and gravy. They will however serve the grouper reuben, for which the Olde Fish House was well known, she added.

“This is the beginning of a new chapter, but it’s not the end of the Olde Fish House. This is allowing some of my staff members to still be with me and it is a healing in moving forward. As much as we don’t want to put Ian in the past, or put the Fish House in the past, we’ve got to move forward. This is a new chapter for my family, and I’m honored to be in the place that was Robin’s. I’m just excited to be able to be the next person to go in there and hopefully create new life and new light there,” Dence said.

For updates regarding the Olde Fish House food truck, follow the Olde Fish House on Facebook. Any island business that would like to act as a vendor for the Matlacha Market in St. James City, call 239-321-3281.

The Salty Girls Island Café is at 10700 Stringfellow Road, #20, Bokeelia.