This October, forget ghosts, goblins and theme-park frightfests. If you want scary, try the packed lines at your local fishmonger on the first day of stone crab season. Soccer moms and snowbirds morph into fanatical old sea salts when it comes time to stake a claim on a pound (or 20) of stone crab claws. I've seen folks get mighty ornery when their position in line is up for debate and there are only a few colossals (seven ounces and over) left. Barbarians.
Still, it's that thread of brutality that allows us to consume the claws in the first place, for stone crabs are not a peaceful food. Picture the scene on the crabbing boats. The fisherman hauls up the trap, retrieves the terrified crab within, grabs it by its rear, twists one of its massive, defensive claws right off, and throws the crab back in the water. Then, to ensure the freshest meat possible, the claw is steamed and put on ice for the trip back to land — probably before the maimed crab even knows what hit it.
On the one hand — no pun intended — stone crabbing has the lowest body count of any type of commercial fishing. The crabs are not killed, and they are left with one claw in order to defend themselves. The missing claw grows back to its original size within 12 months, and the crab can regenerate its claws three or four times throughout its lifetime. In addition, crabbers are not permitted to declaw egg-bearing females.
On the other hand, yowza — that must hurt.
However, lest you shed a tear for the little stone crab, these buggers are tough! Though in all other respects a rather common-looking crustacean, stone crabs won the evolutionary lottery when it came to their oversized, enormously strong claws: think Hellboy's right hand. In a pinch, the claw can exert 19,000 pounds of pressure per square inch, which serves as a deterrent to most predators (though not our hardy fishermen). And the scrappy stone crab has been known to get a bit testy inside a trap, even exhibiting cannibalistic behavior. A one-clawed crab can still do plenty of damage.
Stone crab season runs from Oct.15 to May 15, and some years yields nearly 6 million pounds of claws before the crabbers shut down in spring. The reason the claws are steamed right on the boat, then kept on ice or frozen for shipping, is that raw claw meat spoils so fast. The freshest crabs are the ones hauled up by crews from local restaurants. They twist, steam and deliver them directly to your plate with a side of melted butter or mustard sauce.
So where in town do you go to get your paws on some claws? The biggest season opener (and my personal favorite) is at the Frenchy's restaurants on Clearwater Beach. For 20 years, Mike "Frenchy" Preston has been holding his annual Stone Crab Festival to mark the beginning of the season. Folks line up at all the Frenchy's restaurants (Original, Rockaway, Salt Water and South Beach) for a pound of claws and a beer, and special tents are erected to handle the overflow. Though the festival technically runs from 11:30 a.m. Friday, Oct. 22, through Sunday, Oct. 24, the supply of claws is usually exhausted long before anyone's day of rest. As they say at Frenchy's, "Come early, 'cause the stone crabs go quickly!"
Though most seafood joints in town will begin featuring stone crab claws on their menus this week, there are a few restaurants in Tampa Bay that specialize in it. Billy's Stone Crab, Seafood & Steak in Tierra Verde enjoys waterfront placement overlooking the natural harbor of "Hurricane Hole." The building itself evokes the spirit of old Florida, having been built entirely of native cypress and pine, and thanks to the restaurant's three-decades-long devotion to the cult of the claw, the supply of stone crabs is abundant every season (Billy's works out of thousands of traps).
Even non-restaurant organizations are getting in on the act. At the Tarpon Springs Yacht Club, a benefit for the Leepa-Ratner Museum of Art promises stone crabs for the reasonable (and charitable) price of all-you-can-eat for $50 per person (kids 14 and under eat free, though I can't imagine that's a wise policy, considering how many claws my brothers and I could put away as tots).
For the idle rich among us, there's always the Colony Beach Resort's Annual Stone Crab, Seafood and Wine Festival on Longboat Key, which pairs chefs, vintners, and folks ready to cough up the $1,825-per-couple price tag for a weekend of gala dinners, culinary demonstrations and fine wines carefully selected to pair nicely with the Suncoast's own stone crab. Nice work if you can get it, but I prefer a paper plate, a plastic ramekin of clarified butter, a mallet and a beer served under a tent in the parking lot at 7 Rockaway Street. Call me plebian, but I like my seafood earthy.
If you're down on Longboat Key and simply looking for a good claw, Moore's Stone Crab Restaurant has been keeping the locals happy in Manatee County since 1967. Like most restaurants devoted to this particular crustacean, much of its business comes from the wholesale shipping of claws during the season, and the restaurant's slow months are supplemented with the other usual suspects of the sea: grouper, lobster, calamari…
Still, when mid-October rolls around, there's a certain gleam in every Suncoast seafood lover's eye. A few years ago, my family took a dedicated Maryland native to Frenchy's on Festival weekend. She was determined to be true to her state's official crustacean. We were determined to show her that though we might not compete in blue crabs, we had a lock on the claws. We won, and she paid us off in wooden mallets from a crab house in Bethesda.
The draw of the stone crab is easily understood. The flavor approaches the buttery lushness of lobster, the simply cracked claws trump the complicated cleaning process required to eat Maryland blue crabs, and you don't even have to cook them! Talk about easy pickings.
Where's my mallet?
Freelance writer Diana Peterfreund dines anonymously and the Planet pays for her meals. She may be contacted at diana.peterfreund@weeklyplanet.com. Restaurants are chosen for review at the discretion of the writer, and are not related to advertising.
This article appears in Oct 20-26, 2004.