{"id":4417,"date":"2006-03-05T03:34:53","date_gmt":"2006-03-05T03:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrnystyleandtravel.com\/?p=4417"},"modified":"2013-02-08T03:43:36","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T03:43:36","slug":"joes-stone-crab-miami-beach-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/?p=4417","title":{"rendered":"Joe’s Stone Crab: Miami Beach, Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"401343_10150746212288009_1143089760_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some restaurants have such protocol that, for the uninitiated, the whole experience might be off-putting and overwhelming.\u00a0 Joe\u2019s Stone Crab has a reputation.\u00a0 By now, most everyone in the Western world knows about the sweet stone crabs of Joe\u2019s \u2013 and they probably also know about the lines to get in, the sometimes-interminable wait, and the nagging question about whether or not to glad-hand the maitre d\u2019.\u00a0 Some nights it seems the Jacksons and the Grants pass so quickly from hand to hand \u2013 and other nights, tipping beforehand appears almost non-existent.\u00a0 Sometimes the maitre d\u2019 says, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing I can do for you now.\u00a0 Catch me on the way out.\u201d<\/p>\n

So we wait.\u00a0 We wait in the dark-wooded bar area, a more recent addition to the Joe\u2019s of yore, a bar that is nearly void of personality, save for its resemblance to a Hilton hotel in Kansas City, a basketball game playing on the television mounted near the coffered ceiling.\u00a0 And we think about why we\u2019re waiting.\u00a0 Since 1913, Joe\u2019s Stone Crab has been a mainstay of Miami Beach \u2013 and for many people, perhaps the only reason to come down to the extreme south end of the Beach.\u00a0 Initially a Mr.-and-Mrs. fish restaurant with six tables on the front porch of a bungalow, it wasn\u2019t until the Twenties when a Harvard ichthyologist brought around a burlap sack of stone crabs that the nearly hundred-year-old reputation of Joe\u2019s Stone Crab was signed, sealed, and delivered.<\/p>\n

Found in the warm waters of the Gulf, stone crabs can only be landed with a special state permit, and only one claw harvested \u2013 whereupon the crab is thrown back into the ocean so that the claw can regenerate (which takes anywhere from 12 to 24 months).\u00a0\u00a0 And at Joe\u2019s, no matter how good everything else is, it\u2019s all about the stone crabs.<\/p>\n

And when after maybe thirty minutes, or possibly ninety, we hear our name called over the intercom, we can hardly keep from racing back to the maitre d\u2019s station \u2013 to await our entrance into the main dining room.\u00a0 For this is the heart of Joe\u2019s Stone Crab: a room imbued with the energy of all those who have come before us, the famous and the not-so, the celebrities and the big-shots, the notorious and the legendary.<\/p>\n

For years, Al Capone dined at Joe\u2019s, registering as Al Brown.\u00a0 And one night, we watched as William Jefferson Clinton presided over a table just around the corner from ours, and another night, it was Matt Damon with entourage, and there was also the evening that Larry Flynt rolled in \u2013 all characters in keeping with Joe\u2019s history of serving the high and the mighty, as well as the rest of us.\u00a0 And that\u2019s one of the joys of Joe\u2019s main dining room: as soon as you\u2019re seated, you\u2019re as important as anyone else.<\/p>\n

This is a dining room with such character and run with such professionalism that you feel immediately at home.\u00a0 Almost instinctively, you relax and sink into the embrace of the comfortable chair and the white-clothed service \u2013 as if your body and mind know you\u2019re in the care of someone who does care.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing fussy here, but neither is there anything less than polished.\u00a0 Somehow \u2013 and it must have to do with the sense of family that Joe\u2019s encourages \u2013 you are made to feel as if you matter, regardless of your net worth or Q rating (or lack thereof).\u00a0 This is the kind of service so often seen in black-and-white films from the Thirties and Forties, where decorum is considered de rigueur<\/em>, without being stuffy.\u00a0 You are dining in a room with people who enjoy eating and eating well and the staff is there to serve you and insure that your every need is met, and primarily your comfort and enjoyment.\u00a0 It sounds easy enough, but few establishments get it right the way that Joe\u2019s gets it right.<\/p>\n

And that high standard of service is exactly the same to which the food is held.\u00a0 Start with the fried asparagus and then order a side of the hashed browns, and maybe the fried green tomatoes (anything fried at Joe\u2019s is fried in 100% vegetable oil, with no cholesterol), but try not to order too much.\u00a0 The menu is filled with temptations, the kind of simple, well-cooked food that has been a part of American cuisine for the past 75 years \u2013 but the main point of being at Joe\u2019s is for the stone crabs.\u00a0 Order what the waiter\/waitress suggests, contingent upon what size stone crab is available.<\/p>\n

And then, once your order has been given, sit back and soak up the atmosphere you waited so long to be a part of again.\u00a0 That room, with its dark wood and uniformed staff bustling about, and the constant parade of could-bes and wannabes and true stars, and the hum of happy diners \u2013 because another thing about Joe\u2019s is that stone crabs require time and patience and focus and, therefore, conversation becomes secondary to the joy of eating that sweet meat.\u00a0 Suck every claw clean, and then order another plate of six or eight, if you can, if you want \u2013 because you might as well, while you\u2019re here.<\/p>\n

And then order the key lime pie because everyone does, or if you\u2019ve ordered it before, then try the apple, which is crusted with brown sugar and butter.\u00a0 A silver pitcher of coffee invites you to lean back and sit awhile \u2013 and plot your next visit to Joe\u2019s.\u00a0 Because, apart from the wait to get in, the whole experience is the sort you want to repeat \u2013 right down to the check, which is more than reasonable given all the pleasure you\u2019ve received over the past two hours.\u00a0 Justly famous, Joe\u2019s deserves to remain so for another hundred years.<\/p>\n

LINK: Joe’s Stone Crab<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some restaurants have such protocol that, for the uninitiated, the whole experience might be off-putting and overwhelming.\u00a0 Joe\u2019s Stone Crab has a reputation.\u00a0 By now, most everyone in the Western world knows about the sweet stone crabs of Joe\u2019s \u2013 … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[134,767,398],"class_list":["post-4417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-restaurant","tag-florida","tag-joes-stone-crab","tag-miami-beach"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/401343_10150746212288009_1143089760_n.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31sdB-19f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4419,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4417\/revisions\/4419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mrnystyleandtravel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}