Bayside Provisions is all about fish. The Avon-based company is behind spice blends, breading mixes and a special sauce designed for a perfect fish fry dinner.
But before meeting Ryan — her husband and business partner — Bayside Provisions co-founder Jessica Nagel was no seafood connoisseur.
“I had never eaten fish other than shrimp,” she says. “That was just as far as I went.”
Ryan, coming from a long line of fisherman built on family gatherings dedicated to fish fries, was convinced he could reel her in.
“The first meal Ryan ever made for me was blackened walleye bites,” Jessica says. “I ended up falling in love with the meal and then the man as well.”
The recipe now lives on the Bayside Provisions’ website, along with a myriad of dishes that Ryan and Jessica suggest for utilizing their brand’s specialty ingredients, particularly its bestselling tartar sauce.
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“My uncle wouldn't give me the recipe,” Ryan recalls of the famed tartar sauce that dates back to the 1960s. “We finally got it when we got married. They slipped it into our wedding card.”
Since the brand launched its name in 2023, Bayside Provisions has remained catered to the Great Lakes from the Nagels’ home base in Avon. All products are crafted with certain textures and flavor profiles that are meant to pair specifically with walleye and perch.
It’s a dish that doesn’t always get a lot of attention in the grocery aisles, Ryan says.
“You've got 100 barbecue sauces. You've got 150 hot sauces. You've got 50 mustards, but the tartar sauce niche, there's just nothing,” Ryan says. “Cleveland's fish fries are a huge deal around here, and fishing is a huge deal. You know, we live around the walleye capital of the world here, so we wanted to have a good local option for people.”
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The result? A tangy, creamy sauce that’s both sweet and savory, plus a bit thicker than a normal tartar sauce — more like an aioli, the Nagels note. It’s taken both seafood enthusiasts and skeptics by storm.
“We’ve sold a lot of tartar sauce to people that don't like tartar sauce,” Ryan quips. “It's different, and it's got a lot more complex flavor than a regular store-bought tartar sauce. You can use it on a lot of different things.”
Beyond the sauce’s intent for perch, walleye and other whitefish, the Nagels note that it also pairs blissfully with shrimp, french fries, onion rings, potato salad, hamburgers and even chicken and pasta. While it’s a seafood-driven sauce, it’s not a seafood-restricted sauce, making it a pantry staple.
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This March and April will be the first Lent for Bayside Provisions' tartar sauce; the company received its first shipment of products last summer, and steadily ramped up in the offseason. Now, the Nagels are ready for business to take off this fish fry season — providing recipes that resonate close to home, from a family that knows fish fries as well as any Clevelander.
“We’re just trying to get the word out there that if you're doing fish fries at home, our product is definitely quality ingredients,” Jessica says.
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