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Austin's Oldest Seafood Institution

The history of Quality Seafood Market from its 1938 Congress Avenue stall to its current Airport Boulevard home.

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Long before Austin became a booming modern metropolis, locals were buying fresh fish from a simple market stall near the Texas State Capitol. That stall opened in 1938 inside Starr's Fruit and Vegetable Market on Congress Avenue. Today, that humble business has grown into the Quality Seafood Market, a true Austin institution.

Now operating on Airport Boulevard, Quality Seafood has spent more than eighty years supplying Central Texas with fresh catches. It serves multiple roles as a seafood restaurant, a retail market, and a wholesaler. Whether you are stopping by to cook a fresh fish dinner at home or sitting down in their kitchen for a hot meal, you are participating in a culinary tradition that has fed this city for generations.

It is a rare, enduring piece of old Austin that is still going strong.

Updated June 2026