Can’t wait to share today’s Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant with you! I’ve been looking forward to writing this post from the beginning of this Miami series. This is my first time trying stone crabs and I am amazed! I will share more details later but have to give it a 5-star rating!
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant also has a take-out service. If you decide to dine in, the space is quite large with some partitions. It’s clean and bright and they have restrooms. Overall there is a warm atmosphere that reminds me of countryside houses near the ocean. Their waiters and waitresses are also very friendly.
After making our order, the waiter asked us if we want bibs. I think it’s mainly for the fun and I don’t really need that to keep my clothes clean, but since he asked, I had to put one on 😉 A family was sitting next to our table and they all had their bibs on – adorable!
It first comes with bread and butter. Great butter. (Starting to realize that butter is usually the true star of this ritual lol.) There are all kinds of bread, salty, sweet, soft, hard, puffy, you should be able to share them with friends and find one that you love.
To balance out our guilty feeling of keeping eating seafood, we ordered steamed spinach. He actually said that the cream one is more popular but we were afraid that it would be too heavy for us to finish all the dishes. This steamed spinach is above average to me. It has an obvious garlic scent, and the spinach is just rightly cooked. (I can’t believe I didn’t have it focused when taking this picture…) But the next dish was too impressive and completely took away our attention.
And then, here it is – the star of the show, stone crabs! We ordered one Jumbo and one Large. They have different sizes that you can choose from on their menu. Usually, the smaller one would come with more claws.
These stone crab claws are cooked, cooled, and cracked, and are served with lemons and their (I guess) yellow mustard mayonnaise. The size of these claws caught my eye when they were served. It’s as big as half of my palm or even a full palm! (Inserting the photo below as a reference lol)
The cracked claws are extremely easy to be deshelled. And it has a very light and fresh sweetness with a tender texture. SO HEAVENLY GOOD. It also goes well with a bit of lemon juice or mayo. I just love it! ♡
As we were finishing up our meal, the waiter came to check on us and asked if we want some dessert. He said they are also famous for their Key lime pie and many people will even come for the pie. Since it was a party of two, they kindly split it into two for us. To be honest I didn’t have a high expectation for it. But this is really good! I can understand why he said this is a popular dish. It’s not too sweet, and it has a mild sour-sweet and creamy taste!
In conclusion, I will highly recommend this restaurant! Although it’s slightly expensive if you’re ordering claws, compared to other Miami restaurants, its pricing might be on the lower end. And its food quality is super worth it! Do give it a try if you’ve never tried stone crabs. I will definitely want to revisit Joe’s Stone Crab Restaurant someday as well!
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The Restaurants and Things to Do In Miami & Key West post has more Miami and Key West related traveling information and notes. Check it out if you’re interested!