Naked Fish exposes the fresh side of seafood.(Brief Article)

Joey Crugnale is Livin' la Vida Loca with his Cuban-inspired seafood concept

Restaurateur Joey Crugnale has a knack for taking common foods like ice ream and pizza and making them cutting-edge menu items.

He combined ice cream and candy to create the national Steve's Ice Cream chain, inspiration for the gourmet ice cream movement. Then, Crugnale successfully paired wood-fired brick ovens and pizza to create Bertucci's, which also became a national chain and went public in 1991.

Now Crugnale is testing the waters with the Naked Fish Wood Fired Grill casual seafood concept, which casts seafood in a funky Caribbean/Cuban-theme. This time around, Crugnale is juxtaposing minimally seasoned, fresh seafood against the sensual aura of the Latino movement. Simply put: Crugnale is making seafood sexy.

"There's a passion with Latin music and foods that you don't get with anything else," he says. That passion has helped fuel strong growth for the privately held Woburn, Mass., Naked Restaurants Inc., which also operates the four-unit Jumbalaya Cajun/Mexican concept. Crugnale has opened six Naked Fish restaurants in the greater Boston area since the first location debuted a year ago in Westboro, Mass.

Each location averages $4 million to $6 million in sales. Naked Restaurants is on track to make $37 million in sales this year, up almost four-fold from the $9.7 million the company notched in 1999. Not a bad return for Crugnale, who is funding the concept by himself.

Naked Fish has already drawn accolades: it was chosen by Nation's Restaurant News as one of the publication's Hot Concepts for 2000. The concepts chosen for the NRN awards are those with innovative, cutting-edge operations with strong consumer appeal.