Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab brings us a little bit of Miami

by Liz Grossman
Dining Out - Spring/Summer '09

On any given day in Chicago, you can wander into Joe’s Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab in River North and catch a glimpse of South Beach. For almost 10 years, the clubby, dark-wood restaurant lit by cast iron chandeliers has offered diners a soothing Miami respite no matter what the weather is like outside. Warmth emanates from black and white photos depicting Joe’s founders, Joe and Jennie Weiss, their gregarious son Jesse, and other family members – from grandchildren to steadfast servers donning signature tuxedos. The comfort continues with the service, from the knowledgeable servers to the staff that mans the ever-bustling carryout counter. But it’s with each clank of an empty stone crab shell dropped in the silver buckets on each table and each bite of refreshing Key lime pie that the true flavors of Florida come through at Joe’s.

In was in 1913 that Joe and Jennie Weiss established this delicious haven from the comforts of their South Beach home. “What started as a small little front porch restaurant, now occupies a full city block in Miami.” Says COO and Managing Partner Michael Rotolo, who opened Joe’s Chicago with Lettuce Entertain You Founder and Chairman Richard Melman in 2001, and helped open the Las Vegas outpost in 2004.

“I had known the family for a while,” Melman says. “I think it took about six or eight years of me asking if they would ever do a second Joe’s. Finally they said yes.” From the succulent stone crabs dipped in drawn butter or mustard sauce to the vinaigrette dressing and side dishes like hash browns and grilled tomatoes, Melman wanted Joe’s Chicago to offer the solid signature dishes that turned the original into a dining institution. But there were a few much-needed additions for a meat-and-potatoes town that often found itself in a deep freeze. “I realized early on that what worked in Florida might not work in Chicago, and the thing that made me nervous was that a big percentage of what they sold in winter was a cold entrée, and I didn’t know if that would play in Chicago.”

Melman’s solution was adding steak and seasonal seafood components (from Alaskan king crab to Nantucket Cape scallops) for the comfort food factor, while keeping Joe’s signature items. “We took the essence of what Joe’s is and added what we thought was necessary, and it turned out great. There was the steak component, the seafood component and the stone crab component, and then there was the miscellaneous: the liver, the veal, the fried chicken. ”The expanded menu and availability of high quality frozen stone crab in the off-season also allowed Joe’s Chicago to remain open year-round, while the Miami location takes a 10-week hiatus.

But when stone crab season is in full swing October 15 to May 15, Joe’s fleet of 30 fishing boats are hard at work just off Marathon Key and just south of Naples. “We control the fishing, how quickly we cook them after they’re caught, and the speed at which we move them to the restaurant,” Rotolo says of the hand-harvested crabs. “If you go to Joe’s in Miami, you’re eating stone crabs 24 hours out of the water, In Vegas and Chicago (there’s) an extra 12 hours to overnight them from Miami.” The other aspect to Joe’s stone crab harvesting is a sustainable method of removing just one claw from an egg-bearing female before putting it back into the ocean to regenerate another claw 18 months later. Males donate both claws.

“We knew stone crab would be important to use, but we really didn’t know how much of our menu would feature them in Chicago.” Joe’s founding corporate chef and partner Gary Baca says. “We decided from the beginning that we viewed stone crab as a best-in-class item in terms of seafood and crab. We also knew that Joe’s in Miami was the kind of place that you could eat at everyday – there’s an experience there and it’s sort of centered around stone crab.” The other challenge Baca faced was getting the Miami chefs to give up their age-old recipes. “It was an old-school environment. If my job was making mustard sauce, that was my job and I didn’t tell anyone,” Baca says. He should know, he’s worked with Joe’s Miami Chef Andre Bienvenu to organize and standardize Joe’s recipes for everything from coleslaw to key lime pie. “If I was hanging out in the kitchen, I would scribble notes. Andre would send me recipes and would say flat out, ‘It’s probably not right.’ It took these people three to four years to trust him and give him the right recipe. Little by little we got them all.”

After learning the secrets of Joe’s mustard sauce, creamed spinach, and vinaigrette, Baca started from scratch on the prime steaks.

“If we were going to compete with the great steakhouses, we needed a signature cut,” Baca says. Thus, he added a hand-carved bone-in filet mignon to the meat side of the menu. “It has a nice round edge to it. It looks more refined on the plate.”

With the steak, seafood and stone crabs in place, the final element to add was dessert – namely homemade pies from peanut butter to apple, but to Baca, only one pie is truly, uh, key to unlocking the flavor of Joe’s. “It’s got the right balance of sweet and tart and with the buttery kind of toasty quality of the graham cracker crust. It all works together. Seafood can be rich, even though it’s light. Key lime pie is a natural finish to that meal, especially in Miami with the salty air, the palm trees. It’s perfect. It’ll take you to the beach as much as it possibly can in Chicago through taste and flavor.”

So don’t be surprised if, after some fresh stone crab and a slice if key lime pie from Joe’s, Lake Michigan takes on an unexpected Floridian hue.