April 27, 2016 — MIAMI BEACH, Fla. — It’s Friday afternoon at Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach, Florida, and lunch has gotten off to a rollicking start. Mario Batali’s expected in at any moment with a party of several dozen. The Alinea Group’s asked for even more seats to be reserved. Meanwhile, Martha Stewart’s just called in on her way from the airport, and may or may not need a relatively modest table of fewer than 20. And yet another celebrity chef, in the midst of a messy divorce, has called in his regrets and apologetically explained that it’s not a great time to claim his usual table. Meanwhile, the dining rooms are already booming with the laughter and clatter of Miami’s elite—federal judges, businessmen, doctors—chowing down on endless platters of Florida stone crabs with the requisite ramekins of Joe’s signature mustard-mayo sauce.
But Joe’s is like a massive iceberg, and the dining room is just what customers see on the surface. Behind the swinging doors, the sprawling kitchen has all the frenzied efficiency of a well-oiled machine, with cooks, servers, bussers, stockers, managers, and other staff pumping out a constant stream of stone crabs, fish, salads, sandwiches, and Key lime pies under the watchful eye of general manager Brian Johnson. The back rooms, which include its retail and distribution end, and storage and freezer rooms the size of full kitchens in most Manhattan restaurants—would alone cover much of an average city block.
Joe’s is an industry unto itself, turning seafood into hundreds of happy customers every day, and it’s all thanks to the humble Florida stone crab 103 years ago. That’s when Hungarian immigrant Joe Weiss opened up a beachside seafood shack, selling local fish and, eventually the odd-looking local stone crab that no one had really thought to try eating before. “We have a product that is unique and is indigenous to Florida, and that represents our brand by being sustainable,” says Steve Sawitz, Joe Weiss’s great-grandson and the current COO of Joe’s Stone Crab. “That, right along with the other million details gives you a good chance of staying open for a 100 years.”
“It’s Mother Nature’s perfect gift,” chef André Bienvenu says. “And the fact that the restaurant’s over 102 years old itself, proves to me the product continues to get better and better.”
They’re both talking about the special regenerative properties of the Florida stone crab and how it’s fished. The crustacean can regrow lost limbs over and over again. Crabbers twist off the claws and then throw the crab back in the ocean, where they can recover. Restaurants only serve the claws for customers to eat. That means that Joe’s regulars can be confident that they and their descendants will be eating that sugar-sweet, slightly briny stone crab meat for a long time to come. “We were green before going green was a thing,” general manager Johnson says.