Florida's Stone Crab Season Opens Amid Tuxedos, Optimism: PHOTOS

MIAMI BEACH, FL — Florida's stone crab season opened amid tuxedos and optimism this week as iconic Joe's Stone Crab of Miami Beach celebrated the start of its 106th consecutive year in business after last season proved to be one of the worst in recent memory.

"I anticipate it being better," predicted co-owner Stephen Sawitz of the iconic Miami Beach restaurant that has fed U.S. presidents, the Rolling Stones, Tom Cruise, Elton John, Bill Murray, Matt Damon, John Travolta, Barbra Streisand and a long list of other luminaries over the years.

Last year's season was marked by a lower-than-normal catch of the flaky, sweet crustaceans in many parts of the state and higher prices for consumers.

"Overall, the season's opening catch is expected to be better in most regions than last year," Michelle Kerr of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Institute told Patch.

"The regions that were heavily affected by the red tide last season and subsequently had no catch are currently showing some recovery," she said.

Truluck’s restaurants, which are in 12 cities nationwide including Miami and Fort Lauderdale, expect to snap up 112,000 pounds of the fresh Florida stone crab claws before the season ends May 15.

They, too, are optimistic about the promise of the season ahead.

Joe's typically catches up to 500,000 pounds of stone crab claws for its diners between its two fisheries in Marathon and Everglade City along the Florida Keys. But ast year's catch was off by more than 100,000 pounds.

The season proved so challenging at times that Joe's had to buy some of its claws from suppliers in northern parts of Florida, where the waters get colder than in South Florida and require tighter quality checks.

"Pre-season samples indicate that there are fishable numbers of stone crabs in the region from Manatee County through Collier County at the start of the season," added Kerr, who blamed last year's lower-than-normal catch on the red tide bloom that persisted in the waters off southwest Florida.

Joe's is a good barometer of the industry since the restaurant and its related wholesale business has been known to account for some 25 to 35 percent of all stone crab claws harvested in Florida, where only oversize claws at least 2-3/4 inches long can be taken. The rest of the crab is returned to the water, where it can generate new claws three to four times, making stone crabs a renewable seafood.

Joe's never ran out of stone crabs at its flagship location in Miami Beach last season, but its sister restaurants in Las Vegas, Washington, D.C. and Chicago had to seek other suppliers at times.

Opening Night

By tradition, the first diners of the season at Joe's are greeted on opening night by a line of tuxedo-clad waiters who escort patrons to their linen-draped tables.

Tammy Umbach began her 29th season at Joe's Tuesday night as generations of customers returned to the restaurant to find their catch.

Her first table of the season was part of a large group of 32 diners.

"My partner and I had 24," she said. "Two other waiters had 10. The host gave me orders for appetizers and main courses. Then we took individual orders of salads, drinks, wine etc. It was definitely not what I was expecting tonight right off the bat."

Umbach's strategy was to begin in one place and number all of the diners on her pad from that single point in a clockwise direction. All of Joe's servers have their orders checked for accuracy by cashiers before dishes are delivered to tables on large, round trays.

After 28 years on the job — serving 25 to 30 diners a night, five nights a week for seven months of the year — Umbach is still only one of a handful of women who are among the regular servers at Joe's.

It's not for lack of trying, Umbach said.

"It’s just women did not come in and apply," she explained. "If 100 people showed up for roll call, maybe there were four or five women in the whole group."

All of Joe's servers must be able to carry the large trays from the kitchen to the dining room and must also wear tuxedos each night. The training program requires new servers to shadow three or four experienced servers when they start.

"You're not on a dinner shift for years down the road," Umbach said. "You start out working lunch."

Diners Value Consistency And Quality

Sawitz attributes the longevity of Joe's — the restaurant was named the most popular in all of Florida by People Food and Zagat in 2017 — to the high quality of stone crabs, low turnover among staff and consistency of the dining experience.

Many diners order the stone crabs, hash browns, coleslaw, creamed spinach and key lime pie year after year. But Joe's still managed to work in a few changes to the menu.

"The lobster mozzarella sticks are new that our chef came up with last year and that’s an appetizer," said Sawitz. "Our grouper Cioppino is new. There’s not a lot of changes per se. We have increased the size of our burger going from an 8-ounce to a 12-ounce burger. We added a fried seafood platter."

Celebrity Sightings

Well-known artist Romero Britto was spotted at Joe's on opening night while Umbach can tick off a long line of celebrities she has served over the years, not the least of which was the entire Aerosmith rock band, whom she did not recognize at the time.

"All of the waiters kept walking around my table," she recalled. "They’re like 'Don’t you know who you are waiting on?'"

She once waited on Israeli sculptor and experimental artist Yaacov Agam, who made a sketch on a saucer and presented it to Umbach as a gift.

"It was like a picture of me, just from my little bow tie, my head, my hair and my eyes and my eyelashes before I wore glasses," she said.

The artist's dinner companion gave Umbach a piece of advice that the saucer would one day be worth as much as $10,000 if the artist signed it for her.

"I said 'Well Mr. Agam, would you be so kind to sign this for me?" she recalled with a chuckle.

Not everything has been easy for her.

After her second year at Joe's, Umbach developed a seafood allergy, which prevents her from enjoying the restaurant's signature dish.

Fortunately, the second most popular item on Joe's menu — fried chicken that comes from from free-range birds — is also the most affordably priced and among the most delicious at only $6.95 an order.

"I love the chicken. It’s the best fried chicken in the world and I grew up in South Carolina," she confessed.

It's so good, in fact, Umbach suggests the restaurant management might want to consider a name change down the road: "It should be Joe’s Crab and Chicken House," she quipped.

Watch below as Joe's stone crabs are harvested: