Bibs, Tuxedos Usher In 104th Year At Joe's Stone Crab

MIAMI BEACH, FL — Bibs and tuxedos ushered in the 104th season at Joe's Stone Crab on Friday night as a cortege of nattily attired, menu-clutching waiters queued up to escort guests to their tables in a tradition that plays out year after year. The reopening of Joe's is one of the few constants in a city where there are not many others aside from spring break and the nearby tides along Miami Beach. C0-owner Stephen Sawitz hovered nearby shaking hands and making sure everything was just so as dozens of his crustacean troopers sprang into action.

"How many you got — two or three?" queried one waiter as his first party came into view. Without missing a bead, he teased them on their World Series allegiance en route to a coveted table on opening night. "Houston Astros? Wear it while you can. Yankees are coming." (For more local news from Florida, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Miami Beach Patch, and click here to find your local Florida Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

It was a night of smiles, clanking silverware and massive round trays piled with stone crab claws, thick steaks and fried chicken, wedge salads and key lime pie. For Sawitz, the great, great grandson of the founder, there is a high bar to meet.

Candidly, he tells Patch, he does not plan to be remembered as the generation that dropped the ball.

"If you wear blinders in life you’ll miss great opportunities and you’ll miss that moment," he said, dodging tray-carrying waiters at every turn. "We don’t want to miss a thing. You’ve got to be in the moment. You still have to be courteous. You still have to want to be courteous. That’s who you want to hire and you want people to be happy in the workplace and work hard."

This year, the bar is even higher. Joe's was recently named the most popular restaurant in all of Florida by People Food and Zagat for its "killer seafood stone crabs, as well as its famed key lime pie and fried chicken."

See also Joe's Stone Crab Most Popular Florida Restaurant

That's due in no small part to the restaurant's emphasis on quality and its seasoned staff of servers, cooks, Maître d's and executives led by General Manager Brian Johnston.

"Out of about 80 servers we had to replace and fill in the space for about two people this year," observed Sawitz, who said that his staff receives a week-long orientation every year.

Despite the restaurant's impressive track record, Sawitz still finds himself worrying about the same things from one year to the next.

"I worry about having enough crabs, worry enough about making payroll," You worry enough about paying your vendors and hopefully there’s something left at the end of the year," he conceded. "I worry about it. I do. That's the 'just' in carry on the family tradition."

He wants to keep Joe's a place where people can come to forget about their problems, where they can simply relish in the tradition of enjoying the lobster-like meat tucked inside each stone crab claw. In Florida, only oversized claws can be taken and the claws must be at least 2 3/4 inches long. The rest of the crab is returned to the water where it can generate its claws three to four times, making stone crabs a renewable seafood.

Apparently there is an art to eating them.

"Once you know how to eat a stone crab, it’s so enjoyable. If you don’t know how to eat them it can be frustrating," he concedes.

At Joe's, every stone crab leg is first cracked with a wooden mallet in the kitchen.

"That’s number one if you want to eat them properly. But you can’t over crack and you can’t under crack," he explained. "You’ve got to get it just right. And then, you’ve got to have your mustard sauce. I’m not a big fan of the butter. But if you want melted butter, you can have that too."

There are three parts to the actual claw. "You pull one off and put it on your plate. And then you peel the outside shell like you would peel an egg shell, a hard-boiled egg," he instructed. "I would get all the shell off because you don’t want to bite down on the shell. That’s the key in having a discouraging event, is the biting into a shell. The best thing is to peel off the shell properly and thoroughly and dip it in the mustard, bite down. I’ll close my eyes when I do it. It’s just so good."

The actual stone crab season was to begin at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday Oct. 15. That means the first fresh catch of the season will be arriving at Joe's from the Florida Keys on Monday around 9 a.m. or 10 a.m. Joe's freezes some stone crab claws every year to use in the following opening until the fresh claws are once again available.

But not everyone eats the restaurant's signature dish, particularly children and landlubbers. For them, there are assorted steaks from which to choose along with the restaurant's second most popular dish as well as its most affordable — fried chicken.

"That's our number two best seller after stone crabs," he said. "You get half of a chicken for $6.95. That is a part of the philosophy of the restaurant is to make sure that everybody can afford to eat at Joe’s no matter what. There are many people who can certainly afford to eat here that do eat the fried chicken because it’s really, really good."

Whether they come for the stone crab claws or the fried chicken, there's one thing that almost everyone can agree on — a slice of key lime pie for dessert.

"We have a key lime pie room and one person (who) that’s all they do," said Sawitz, noting that Joe's uses a combination of large and small limes in its cherished recipe. "We use fresh squeezed lime juice versus pasteurized lime juice. You don’t want to use pasteurized if you want it to be authentic. You want the real deal."

A waiter picks up a tray of stone crab claws on opening night. Cover photo and photo gallery by Paul Scicchitano.